RAPID SOCIAL MARKETING RESPONSE (NUMBER 3)
What Is It?
I know, this sounds just like social marketing insights, but it's actually the next logical step-defending the brand in a short response time (around five minutes).
This is the use case that really validates Social Marketing Insights. For example, let's say you sell all-natural chicken jerky treats for dogs (like one of our clients), and another, separate brand undergoes a gigantic product recall, like the gigantic 2007 Menu Foods pet food recall discussed in Chapter 2. Your brand would use Rapid Social Marketing Response to quickly (say, in under an hour) show customers that your brand is not affected by the recall and that your products are safe.
The Altimeter study cites a document called the Punked List; it's a cringeworthy document that lists brands that have been "exposed" or pranked by the social customer. Again, these incidents only made mainstream media like CNN because the social customer was effectively and quickly engaged.
Which Consumer Brands Are Using It?
The list here is also pretty long because some of the vendors that offer this type of solution are mainstream CRM and social community management vendors (Jive), or even e-mail marketing platforms (ExactTarget recently moved into this space by acquiring CoTweet). A small sample would include Papa John's (HootSuite), Starbucks (CoTweet), and MolsonCoors (Radian6).
What Is Market Demand and Tech Maturity?
This is where I break with the Altimeter report. They say Early Mover, but I say Evangelizable, meaning that the challenge is that while the market demand for this type of solution is actually pretty high, Jeremiah and Ray think the product itself is not yet fully technically "baked." I think it is. The key challenge here is vendor selection-finding one that plays nice with your CRM software. In March 2011, Salesforce and Radian6 announced a Radian6 app that should hopefully do just this.
Which Three Vendors Are Doing It Well, for Consumer Brands?
HootSuite has a nice basic product for under $1,000 per year, and most of the larger Social Marketing Insights brands like Radian6 now have a Rapid Social Marketing Response product built into their Insights solutions; ditto Buzzient, if you're running it on a large CRM. Also, social community platforms like Jive and Salesforce now also have a Rapid Social Marketing Response component built in.
What's the Catch?
You may not need to buy it, because you might already own it. Check with your existing vendors before shelling out. The first call to make would be to your existing CRM platform, especially if you're a small or medium-sized brand.
A downside is that it's going to be pretty difficult to coordinate how multiple teams or departments respond to the social customer if the rapid response portion of your Social CRM doesn't share the same platform. Imagine what would happen if your marketing team was using Salesforce, the sales team was using CoTweet and Oracle, and customer service was using a homegrown CRM and a low-rent solution like HootSuite: a costly Social CRM train wreck would occur.
Ed. note: This is part of a series of excerpts from The Social Customer, the new guide to social customer acquisition, monetization, and retention by Adam Metz. For the first entry, go here.
This installment continues Chapter 5: Social Marketing. Adam spells out one of the most important use cases: rapid social marketing response.