June 9, 2016 · 11:43 am

Counting On Social

I can’t think of a single company with which I’ve had contact in the last year or two that isn’t somehow engaged in social media marketing. Maybe it’s a Facebook page or an Instagram account or maybe it’s just executives posting on LinkedIn. It’s always surprising when I inquire about the other end of that content funnel. How is social working? What are your goals? The surprise has to do with the lack of a coherent plan to track and measure the social media efforts these companies are making. I’d like to provide a little food for thought on that today.

First, it goes without saying that however you’re measuring social it should also integrate into whichever analytics platform you’re using. It’s really pretty easy to tag, for example, any URL with the parameters needed by Google Analytics to report social activity beyond the defaults offered along with any supporting ads you’re running or email campaigns. It’s a little more effort but possible even to track “dark social” that way using a combination of custom segments and/or third party tools. Dark social, by the way, is the term used to refer to all that wonderful content you produce that’s shared among readers via email or text messages or some other non-public platform. Some folks have figured that as much as 85% or more of content is shared that way, so you shouldn’t ignore it.

Back to our topic. Analytics measure “how much”. In addition, you need to be measuring how readers feel. It’s not a great situation to have a lot of consumers posting and sharing negative things about your brand. If you’re only measuring how much activity, that might look like a win. At the most simple level, you should be paying attention to comments and posts. There are free tools available to locate and compile this information. You can then do your own sentiment analysis or use a tool to do so if the volume is just too great (a good problem to have!).

Finally, you should try to understand how many of the people who follow you on one platform are also tracking you on others.  These “superfans” are probably your best targets and the ability to identify them in order to reward their loyalty is a massively impactful bit of research.  You can’t ignore the analytics most platforms offer as well.  They can help in understanding not only who your audience is but what resonates with them (and that’s really true if you can add the dark social shares discussed earlier).

Wha to measure?  I’m not going to tell you since whatever it is needs to reflect your business goals and the tactics you’ve taken.  There is a pretty good list in this article to help your thinking but I’d urge you to get beyond the quantitative things such as “likes” or “followers” and more into the qualitative things such as engagement.  What’s important is that you not just throw your social efforts out into the digital ozone.  OK?

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June 8, 2016 · 8:41 am

Telling Customers To Go FICO Themselves

Today’s screed is yet another instance of someone committing the grievous error of telling the truth about his organization’s bad behavior, and doing so in a public forum! Not surprisingly, this executive comes out of the cable industry, which is renowned for having a somewhat less than favorable reputation among consumers.  This guy isn’t helping.

Let me state upfront that I know plenty of cable executives.  I grew up in the TV business with some. Heck, I’ve even had them as clients (none of them are at the moment!).  I will categorically state that they are generally good business people and even better human beings, at least most of them.  I’m not sure why the cable industry has the generally lousy reputation among consumers, but facts are facts.  This statement, spoken by the CEO of Cable One might shed a little light on it:

According to company CEO Thomas Might, the Phoenix, Ariz.-based MSO has deployed a “very rigorous FICI credit scoring process” on its video customers since 2013.  “We don’t turn people away,” Might said, but the cable company’s technicians aren’t going to “spend 15 minutes setting up an iPhone app” for a customer who has a low FICO score.

Yes, you’re reading that right.  He’s happy to take the money of people with bad credit scores but he’s not going to service them to any degree.  As you might be aware, not everyone with a bad credit score is of lesser means.  Maybe you had a billing dispute so you didn’t pay it and the vendor put through a ding to your credit report.  Maybe you didn’t get paid by clients and you couldn’t pay some bills. Or maybe you just live in the “wrong” neighborhood.  In any event, Cable One isn’t going to service you even though you’re paying the same fees as the folks with sterling credit scores.

It goes without saying that  every one of these customers is signing the same contract with the cable company and, therefore, is entitled to the same support for the level of cable service they’re buying. Not in the CEO’s mind. In my mind, discrimination of any sort is a bad idea.  That’s not to say rewarding your best customers with “extras” is bad – it isn’t.  That’s not what we’re seeing here.  This is denigrating the basic support a customer can expect based on a measure of that customer’s financial stregth, and I think it’s wrong.  You?

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June 7, 2016 · 12:09 pm

This Is Disturbing

A little over a year or ago, Jon Mandel, who is a widely respected media maven, made a statement in front of an ad convention that kickbacks were rampant in the media and agency businesses. He alleged that agencies were receiving funds back from various media sources and these payments were never reported to the clients. It was such a widespread issue that he left a position as head of one of the biggest ad agencies in the US in part over it.

I worked with Jon in my past life and I’d certainly not cite him as one who is prone to rash groundless statements. Apparently, neither would the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the trade group that represents marketers. They commissioned a security firm to conduct an investigation of the allegations and the report came out last Friday. It’s not pretty.

You can read the report here but some topline results found non-transparent business practices employed by agencies, some of which may or may not have been contract-compliant, included the following:

  • Cash rebates from media companies were provided to agencies with payments based on the amount spent on media. Advertisers interviewed in the K2 Intelligence study indicated they did not receive rebates or were unaware of any rebates being returned.
  • Rebates in the form of free media inventory credits.
  • Rebates structured as “service agreements” in which media suppliers paid agencies for non-media services such as low-value research or consulting initiatives that were often tied to the volume of agency spend. Sources told K2 Intelligence that these services “were being used to obscure what was essentially a rebate.”
  • Markups on media sold through principal transactions ranged from approximately 30 percent to 90 percent, and media buyers were sometimes pressured or incentivized by their agency holding companies to direct client spend to this media, regardless of whether such purchases were in the clients’ best interests.
  • Dual rate cards in which agencies and holding companies negotiated separate rates with media suppliers when acting as principals and as agents.
  • Non-transparent business practices in the U.S. market resulting from agencies holding equity stakes in media suppliers.

The response by the agency community?  Because the study did not name names, many of the big players seem to be denying there is a problem.  The 4A’s, which is the agency trade group said:

Without an opportunity for agencies to assess and address the veracity of information provided to K2, sweeping allegations will continue to drive attention-grabbing headlines; this does nothing to foster a productive conversation or to move our industry forward and could cause substantial economic damage to all media agencies.

It seems to me that the “productive conversation” needs to have happened quite a while ago.  When some media buying companies realized that they couldn’t make any profit executing buys, rather than have a heart to heart with the people paying their bills they chose, in essence, to cheat. Is it painting with too widespread a brush?  Probably, but one can imagine the lawsuits that would follow the publication of a list of the offenders.

It’s a good lesson for any of us in business.  Just as our clients’ problems become our problems, a healthy business relationship should foster open exchanges of the issues we face as well.  Labelling this problem as “unsubstantiated claims” and denying there is a problem doesn’t solve anything – ask the climate change deniers if ignoring the problem is making it go away. Transparency and good communication are high on any list of best business practices.  Are they on yours?

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