Affinitive’s Social Media Playground

When marketers decide to use any marketing channel, they should always ladder back to the brand’s objectives. This is hardly a novel concept and is part of any strategic process, such as the famed Forrester POST methodology, that many use to determine a Social Marketing plan of action.

When it comes to Social Marketing specifically, those objectives can often range from increasing brand site engagement and traffic to Public Relations and everything in between. Just like any other channel, it can be used as a funnel for a variety of types of messaging that is targeted at a varying set of objectives.

Enter an interesting little chart (embedded here).

Like many other marketers, I subscribe to Marketing Sherpa’s Chart of the Week.  These handy charts often give a snapshot on one element going on in the world of marketing that they’ve done a broader research initiative surrounding.

I thought this week’s was particularly interesting. It measures the objectives, targeted and measured, by marketers within the social sphere. The big “aha” finding in this is that 3/4 of marketers claim that site traffic increase is one of their key objectives for deploying social tactics.

Marketing Sherpa’s conclusion is the same one that I would come to – while an increase in time on site, overall site traffic, SEO optimization and other objectives within that zone are great secondary benefits of Social, there is a larger opportunity to leverage social in a scalable way to provide self service tools and information to consumers that can then, in turn, reduce overall brand cost that can be very heavy when dealing with and addressing customer needs.

There are several brands who actively leverage social platforms to reduce these customer support costs including:

• JetBlue and Virgin America – who actively tweet and provide information about flight delays, schedule changes, weather alerts, and responses to specific customer inquiries
• Best Buy’s “Twelpforce” – integrated from Twitter all the way to in-store Point-of-Sale (POS), this massive program helps answer customer questions, provide product information, support, etc in a scalable way
• Comcast’s service guru Frank Eliason, who has been deemed the “most famous customer service manager in the US” by Brandweek for his work primarily in the social space (major points for early adoption)

Have you seen any other examples of brands leveraging Social Marketing to help create a supportive consumer environment?