Social Business Olympics - The Social CRM Insider

I’m sure you’ve heard, but there’s an event going on in London called the Olympics.

This year, 205 nations will converge and compete in 300 games. That’s a total of 61,910 experiences for nations (I’m not calculating the individual athletes for each nation – but just know that it’s hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of experiences) and billions of experiences for spectators worldwide.

What’s really great about the Olympics, aside from the union of the world nations and epic moments, is that there’s just about something for everyone.

Do you like team sports? What about solo performances? Maybe you prefer to watch athletic events you can only see televised every four years. Maybe you just like to watch the interviews and see the secret lives of Olympic athletes. Then again, maybe you just want to see Paul McCartney and David Beckham.

Whatever your fancy, these sixteen days every four years will show you something you want to see and engage you in some way.

Aside: At this point, I’d like to calm your fears that this will be a post claiming you need to be “all things to all people,” it is not because I think that’s a silly strategy for any company. I will also not be touching on NBC’s failings in their Olympic coverage in the States because that doesn’t really apply to what we’re talking about.

Experience The Games

Last week we talked about how to bring experiences from real life events into your Social CRM strategy but the truth is, your business has more facets and moving parts than could ever be truly experienced at a live event.

So, how do you connect all those moving pieces under your brand while still allowing your customers to experience those whole facets individually? That’s a question for a deeply integrated Social CRM system and why you need to take a hard look at which system you choose only after fully understanding your needs and objectives.

This is where the thinking gets a little tricky and it helps if you have a dedicated and well-informed team on your side. You need to think of all your campaigns, messages, social channels and outlets as individual experiences while also understanding they have to fit under the same umbrella.

Back to our Olympics example.

When you go and watch the 400m male swimming trials you will get a completely different experience than when you watch the female cycling race, but all the while you never feel like you’re outside the world of The Olympics.

That’s the feeling you want to create under your Social Business, so it’s not all social media and it’s not all customer service and it’s not all TV commercials that define the brand; it’s each experience bringing something unique to the table.

Here are the questions that you need to ask when beginning this process for your company (and some examples as well).

What are all the avenues that have proven successful in communicating with our markets? Maybe you’ve discovered that no radio ads ever convert or that your magazine spots aren’t bringing in qualified leads to your sales team. I’ve worked with enough companies that are so stubborn to avenues they are “familiar with”, that they miss opportunities in areas that DO convert that they just haven’t explored enough (like PPC or SEO).
What segment of your target market actual responds well to each channel? TV may convert amazingly in the 35-55 age range of men, but you’re hoping to reach more 18-34-year-olds. Look into your analytics and find which channels appeal to which segments and write out personas for each of those channels.
What unique messaging should be attached to each of the highest-converting channels? Now that you know which groups of your customers are responding to which channels, how do they like to be talked to? Will sarcastic humor work well on social media, but not on direct mail? Where does video and imaging fit in?
Are all channels unique, but still connected under the base characteristics of your Social Business? Yes, make all your channel messaging unique, but if you’ve made it known that your business is an avid supporter of human rights and equal treatment in one channel, don’t spend your efforts in other channels making inflammatory remarks for the sake of humor just because that works in that medium.
Are you taking action or just analyzing? Some of these steps can be time-consuming, I know that, but don’t let that stop you from actually implementing things once you have your answers. Social media has changed the way prospects take in messaging and a stagnant brand is a dead brand. Analyze your data, sure, but don’t sit on it until things are “perfect,” that will never happen. At some point, you have to actually throw that javelin and see where it lands.

There are a lot of games to play in the world of business marketing and even more events are added when you throw social media into the mix.

Make sure you’ve trained and stretched yourself to be able to meet the demands of the games you’re about to play. If you take the time up front to make sure you’re ready, you may just walk away with a medal and the respect of spectators worldwide.

Better still, you just might make a hell of a lot of sales, which is also nice.

Thoughts?

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