In the last two weeks, I have published a couple of posts associated with Graph Marketing. The first titled “Graph Relevance: The Rise of Graphs in Marketing & Advertising“. The next piece was an infographic that detailed the pros and cons of “Leading Graph Platforms“. Today I would like to focus on the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and what Graph Marketing means for them.

Universal connectivity is creating profound changes that may be felt everywhere. Within the marketing function of business, the CMO is feeling this impact most acutely in her overall strategy, product/service design, marketing/advertising, distribution/sales channels and within customer service. Indeed, just in the last couple of months, new graph innovations from Facebook, Google Twitter and LinkedIn are forcing CMOs to rethink their approaches to search marketing, social advertising, and application development.

How should CMOs respond to the above transformations? Below are four recommendations that I offer as a way to ready yourself and your organization for Graph Marketing.

1. Embrace Change
Understand that the customer decision process has evolved into a dynamic journey with many phases where graphs play an instrumental role in how they discover, evaluate, purchase, experience and (hopefully) advocate on behalf of a brand. Please read “The Funnel is DEAD!” and “Consider the Honeybee When Attracting Your Social Customers” for further context.

2. Design Systems
Place human experience and social design at the core of marketing activities (whether it’s building a new mobile app or planning a new advertising campaign) by utilizing your customer’s communities, conversations and social identities. Do not design destinations. Instead, design systems of engagement.

• Communities are defined by customer’s social relationships (Social Graphs) and shared interests (Interest Graphs). CMOs may use this data to better target and serve customers.
• Conversations refer to the interactions your customers have within their communities. Listening surfaces customer activities. Sharing provides feedback and engagement.
• Identity refers to a customers sense of self and how they are viewed by their communities. CMOs must understand how they are relevant to their customer’s social profiles.

3. Develop Networking Skills
An enterprise must balance multiple overlapping networks of many types. This will require your team to develop networking skills and strategies that span and impact your personal & professional networks.

• Know the role of different types of networks and be cognizant of the best ways to engage them.
• Enable the enterprise to interact with networks in a distributed and controlled way through a Social Media Management System (SMMS).
• Train staff with basic networking skills and in the art of improvisation to know how to engage with customers; communicate in a way that’s honest and sincere; adds value and keeps the narratives fresh and interesting.

4. Employ Data Scientists
Recruit data scientists into your marketing organization to assist with (among other things):

• Big data collection, warehousing, and intelligence.
• Emerging graph databases and benchmarks (Neo4J, Facebook’s Linkbench, etc,) and how they can be leveraged for digital applications.
• Graph data visualization to discern important patterns and create new marketing hypothesis to test.

Without question, the above four recommendations are simply scratching the surface. A book could be written about each in their own right (in fact many have already been published). If the changes that are occurring today seem overwhelming, it is because they are. You are not alone in this race to understand all of the new dynamics in marketing and communications that are at play. By simply starting with one of the above recommendations, you will put yourself and your organization on the right track and learn along the way.

Contact Us Today to learn how Graph Marketing can help your business engage your customers in meaningful ways that produce real results.

A recent study by YouGov Healthcare titled ’Consumers’ Use, Preference and Expectations of Hospital Social Media‘ uncovers some compelling stats that make a strong case for hospitals to step up their game when it comes to engaging their social customers.  Below is our latest infographic that details the reports top line results:

Related Post: Social Design and Corporate Websites (Infographic)

Contact Us Today to learn how Graph Marketing can help your business engage your customers in meaningful ways that produce real results.

A study conducted by BuzzAgent revealed that advocates are 2.5x more likely to us social media to expand their social circles. Understanding the habitat of your Social Customers and what platforms they use to share information about your products and services is crucial to your Social Design strategy. Below are the results from BzzAgent’s survey question that asked:

 Social Networking Sites

• Advocates 58%

• Web Users 27%

 Email

• Advocates 53%

• Web Users 39%

 eCommerce Website

• Advocates 43%

• Web Users 22%

 Online Feedback

• Advocates 28%

• Web Users 7%

Source: The Actions, Motivations and Influence of Brand Advocates

Additional Reading:

1. Your Social Customer’s Habitat
2. Your Social Customer’s Behaviors
3. Your Social Customer’s Motivations

Contact Us Today to learn how Graph Marketing can help your business engage your customers in meaningful ways that produce real results.

In order for brands to take an evolutionary step in how they integrate social with their corporate website, they must commit to the principals of Social Design and leverage their customer’s interest graphs, conversations, and identity to intimately inform their site experience. Below is an infographic that details four important steps in this exercise:

The Wall Street Journal and Time have both taken the above mentioned steps by implementing Gravity’s Personalization technology on their respective websites. We predict that even more brands are bound to follow suit in 2012.

If you are interested in speaking with beehau.us about how Social Design can play a role in your corporate website social integration initiatives, please contact us today.

Sources:

• Gravity
• Tips to Extend Your Social Strategy to Your Site
• Secrets of Engagement: Leverage Social to Unlock User Value on Your Site

Contact Us Today to learn how Graph Marketing can help your business engage your customers in meaningful ways that produce real results.