Digital Marketing | Digital Strategy | This Digital World

Digital Sales Will Take Time to Replace Physical

A recent study by research firm EMarketer shows that it will be another tough few years for the movie business, as sales of DVDs continue to decline and digital sales fall short of making up the gap.

 
Despite expected healthy growth in digital, it is a bleak picture for many of the big entertainment companies, who some say are still not doing enough to embrace this real change in consumer behaviour.

With services in the US like Hulu offering a simple way to watch movies and TV online, often for a fraction of the price of DVDs (or free), it is not too surprising that consumers are opting for the simplest, cheapest way to get what they want.  Netflix launched its streaming iphone app last week, which gives any registered user paying about $9 a month, access to hundreds of movies instantly, through their iphone or ipad.  It works beautifully, so long as you are on a decent wifi connection.

The music industry has the same set of issues, although arguably piracy is a bigger problem.

As technology improvements continue to make life simpler, we will all gravitate to accessing content in the simplest, cheapest and least riskiest way possible.  Now is the time for traditional entertainment companies to start building some brand equity in the digital world and position themselves for future growth by building relationships directly with the consumer, rather than dragging their heels and pretending that this digital evolution is smaller than it really is.

Facebook is a Great Customer Support Tool

 

 

Many businesses are now using Facebook as a valuable way to solve their customers' product questions and problems.

RealNetworks's flagship application, RealPlayer, is a great example of how the company interacts with its users from all over the world, solving problems and saving money into the bargain.

Every time someone picks up the phone and speaks to an advisor, it costs the business money.  By directing users of its free RealPlayer application to the Facebook page, Real has been able to save tens of thousands of dollars and provide feedback and support in an environment that the user is comfortable with.

Customer support on Facebook also provides a level of transparency that has helped bolster the brand value.  A problem shared is a problem solved, so the saying goes. Well by posting a problem, which others may have, and seeing the company respond quickly and (usually) to the satisfaction of the user, does wonders for reputation.

Of course it still costs money to provide 24/7 support via Facebook, but online responses are more cost effective, more transparent and often faster, so it ends up being a win win for both the business and the customer.

How Dell is Embracing Social Media

This is an interesting interview with the guy who is responsible for corporate blogging at computer giant Dell.

I have reposted the entire article courtesy of Digital Media Buzz:

DMB’s Dave Fidlin recently spoke with Menchaca, a 17-year Dell veteran, about social media, and how the method will continue to shape the company’s marketing and outreach efforts in the future.

Can you explain your role as chief blogger for Dell?

My role is to keep things moving with our external network of blogs. Direct2Dell now exists in five languages. Direct2Dell is our main corporate blog. Beyond it, we have 7 additional blogs. Our latest is Direct2Dell India, which focuses content on one of our fastest-growing countries in Dell’s business.

How is Dell marketing beyond established, traditional methods? Is the company getting the word out about its products through such avenues as Facebook and Twitter?

Yes, very much so. We have two main pages in Facebook — Facebook for Home, which focuses on product and service information for consumers and Facebook for Business, which focuses on reaching business customers there. We’ve been very active on Twitter as a company since 2007. We use Twitter in 4 main ways: 1) to keep our customers informed 2) to engage our customers from different areas of our business 3) to sell to our customers who opt in to sites like @DellOutlet and 4) to support our customers. We now offer 24/7 support to customers on Twitter via @DellCares. See Dell.com/twitter for more details

Aside from the two big companies — Facebook and Twitter — how else is Dell using social media?

Our core strategy in social media is to go where our customers are. That means we maintain a Dell presence in many other social sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, Scribd and outside the US in Sina’s microblogging service. Beyond our own blogs, our forum site and all of our presence on outside social networks, we’re also focused on responding to comments on other places on the Web, like third-party user forums or blog sites.

Can you quantify, percentage-wise, how much of Dell’s marketing and outreach efforts go toward social media (versus traditional marketing) in 2010?

Our social media marketing budget is very small compared to our traditional marcom spend. Outside of some ad credits to drive awareness to the Dell Facebook for Home pages and drawing attention to some of our social media efforts via Dell.com, we spend very little to promote our social media activities.

Do you have an idea of what the ROI (rate of return) is for Dell’s social media efforts?

Yes, we do, and that’s an area where we are still working on. In the early days, we measured social media’s impact on customers’ perceptions and found a pretty strong correlation—at the low point in 2006, about 48 percent of what was said about Dell was negative. We were able to get that into the low 20+ percent range. Today, we’re able to track all the basic traffic numbers you would expect, but beyond traffic, we’re looking at things like reach, engagement, brand reputation and more. We’re also starting to use more of the same tools on the social media side that we’ve been using to measure Dell.com like Omniture. There’s still more work to be done, but we’re making progress.

Where, in your opinion, is social media heading into the future, and how is Dell going to stay on the pulse of this still-growing method of communication?

I really think over the next several years, social media will become an integral part of how companies in many industries will do business. To me it’s a natural progression to add from things like telephones, e-mail, the Internet, chat and beyond. Just like many other aspects of business, it all comes down to execution. In my view, companies who learn to use social media to really connect with their customers will have a huge fundamental advantage over companies who don’t.

Do you envision a day when social media might completely replace traditional marketing methods, or is that an extreme statement?

No way do I think that social media will ever replace traditional marketing methods. I do think that social media can and will continue to augment traditional marketing methods. I think social media will make companies smarter in how they market to and engage with customers, and I think that’s a good thing. Like many others in social media today, I’m glad to see the era of one-way push marketing giving way to something different – a place where customer feedback shapes the direction of the company.

Why Social Media Matters

 Geoffrey Moore’s bestseller “Crossing the Chasm” , sums up the reason why social media matters :

“Fundamentally, marketing must refocus away from selling product and toward creating relationships. Customers don’t like to be ‘owned’ if that implies lack of choice or freedom. But they do like to be ‘owned’ if what that means is a vendor taking ongoing responsibility for the success of their joint ventures.

Ownership in this sense means an abiding commitment and a strong sense of mutuality in the development of the marketplace. When customers encounter this kind of ownership, they tend to become fanatically loyal to their supplier, which in turns builds a stable economic base for profitability and growth.”

Social media is the perfect excuse to actually create a relationship with your customer. Enough said.