Social Media Marketing: What Not To Expect

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1-888-REGALIX | info@regalix-inc.com
Palo Alto, USA | Bangalore, India | New Delhi, India | Chandigarh, India

© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 1

 Speaker – Nimish Vohra

 Vice President and Country Head at Regalix Inc.

 Decade of experience in Digital Marketing, Human Factors and Creative

design

 Previously with StarTV (one of the largest Entertainment and Media

companies) as Program manager for the R&D and production of next
generation Cable/Satellite Television programs

 Built ChaiTime, a large online community of NRIs

 Worked as Creative Lead in agencies with many of his creations going

on to become memorable house-hold names and still featured on
several Asian Networks

 Masters Degree in Industrial Design from IIT Mumbai and an

Engineering Major
©
©2006
2009Confidential
Confidential||Think
ThinkInnovation
Innovation 2
 Contents

 Social Media Marketing: Some success stories

Three examples of what not to expect OR how

to set the right expectation

Establishing a reach metric for your program

 Quick take-aways

 Questions

POLL >>
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Social Media Marketing: Success Stories

1.5MM followers!
Directly engaged
with about 1% of
the US voting
population

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Social Media Marketing: Success Stories

AT&T using
Twitter as a
customer service
tool

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Social Media Marketing: Success Stories

DellOutlet got $3MM

in additional
revenues attributed
to their Twitter effort

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Social Media Marketing: Success Stories

Palm reaches out to

its fans with latest
promos and product
offerings

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Social Media Marketing: Success Stories

More than a million

fans to whom the
advertiser can reach
out to

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Social Media Marketing: Success Stories

More than 600

‘episodes’ reviewing
wine, more than
600k views

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Social Media Marketing: Success Stories

Social strategy spanning YouTube, UStream,

Facebook, Twitter, etc

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Social Media Marketing: Success Stories

Home Depot channel on

YouTube, with numerous how-
to videos

WHAT NEXT >>

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 What Next?

?
- Nature of the medium: we
hear the best stories!
- Don’t start out to write a
successful monstrous
volume of a book. A draft
POLL >> would serve well enough!
© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 12
Example 1/3:
Do not expect 100k active users in 2
months
1. You have launched an online public service
site that answers questions about Taxes,
Mortgages, Investment Options, etc

You have launched a site connecting service

providers and consumers of Taxes, Mortgages,
Investment Options

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Example 1/3:
Do not expect 100k active users in 2
months
1. You have launched an online public service site

2. You plan on trying out social media – right choice as

that is where your users are. You set yourself a goal
of 100k active users, and the following team
 1 person to identify traffic sources and 5 member team to
drive conversations to your site
 You plan to engage users on groups and forums
 Conversations on blogs and articles
 Manage your own blogs and twitter page
 Create pages and communities on Facebook and other sites
 Create content on Wikipedia, Squidoo, Hubspot, etc

© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 14

Example 1/3:
Do not expect 100k active users in 2
months
1. You have launched an online public service site
2. You plan on trying out social media – right choice as you that is where your
users are. You set yourself a goal of 100k active users, and the following team

3. Does the math work out?

 To get 100k active users, you probably need 200k users on the
site. For 200k users you need 200k x 10 visitors to your site (if
CR is 10%). Or 2MM users.
 Each person participates in 40 conversations a day that drives
20 clicks each. Total clicks to site: 20 clicks per conv *40 conv per day
*30 days *5 resources *2 months = 240,000 clicks. Short by a factor
of 8!
 To reach your goal you require 6*8 or 48 people to do social
media marketing! If you are a new business with a new site,
would you have the budget?
POLL >>
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Example 1/3:
Do not expect 100k active users in 2
months
1. You have launched an online public service site
2. You plan on trying out social media – right choice as you that is where your
users are. You set yourself a goal of 100k active users, and the following team
3. Does the math work out?

4. How would PPC fare?

 Social marketing cost: 48 resources * $2000 per resource per
month++ = $96k per month or $192k for two months
 Spend this money on paid search: @ 15 cents a click (includes
cost of managing the campaign) it gets you 1.31MM clicks
 You are still short!

EXAMPLE 2 >>
++
cost with an agency such as Regalix who works with an extended high quality team in India
© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 16
Example 2/3:
Do not expect sales funnel to fill up in a
month
1. You sell content management system, priced at
$25k per installation
 Your pre-sales and sales team is currently handling
20 qualified leads a month, and has the capacity to
take on another 10.

2. You have heard about social marketing success

stories and you think investing $10k a month in
social marketing should give you the return you
expect. Would you be justified?

© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 17

Example 2/3:
Do not expect sales funnel to fill up in a
month
1. You sell content management system, priced at 25k per installation. Your sales team
can take on 10 additional qualified leads
2. You have heard about social marketing success stories and you think investing 10k a
month should give you the return you expect. Would you be justified?

3. Calculating current CPL: Source of leads is PPC,

organic traffic on the website (= content, SEO),
database building (events, database vendors) and
mailing. Breakup:
 PPC media ~ $10k
 Website content and SEO ~ $8k a month (includes articles and whitepapers
you write and put on the website)
 Whitepaper marketing ~ $5k a month (pay per lead from B2B sites)
 Database acquisition and mailer ~ $8k a month
 Marketing cost to manage the above programs: $10k a month

 Total ~ $41k per month for 20 qualified leads; CPL ~$2k per lead

© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 18

Example 2/3:
Do not expect sales funnel to fill up in a
month
1. You sell content management system, priced at 25k per installation. Your sales
team can take on 10 additional qualified leads
2. You have heard about social marketing success stories and you think investing
10k a month should give you the return you expect. Would you be justified?
3. CPA from current marketing activities ~$2k per lead

4. Assuming social media marketing is not any less expensive

over the first 6-9 months, you should provision for $2k a lead,
or $20k as budget for social media to get 10 qualified leads a
month.
 It is a new channel you are experimenting with – before
efficiency builds up, you might need to invest in the channel -
$3k per lead to begin with or $30k per month for the
first three months is what you should provision for

POLL >> EXAMPLE 3 >>

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Example 3/3:
Do not expect 50k card sign-ups in 2
months
1. You are a bank, and want to promote a credit card
online

2. You estimate that social media has the potential to

deliver an additional 30% leads.
 For you currently paid search + banners and are turning out
leads @ around $3 per form fill up, and accounts for 70% of
the leads. The website accounts for 30% of the lead volume –
the cost is not clearly benchmarked.
 Given that this is such a B2C product which usually gets talked
about so frequently on social media, would you be justified
in your expectations?

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Example 3/3:
Do not expect 50k card sign-ups in 2
months
1. You are a bank, and want to promote a new credit card
2. You estimate that social media has the potential to deliver an additional 30%
leads @ $3 per lead

3. Perhaps not. The regular approach of talking about

the product on social media could fall flat. The need is
clear, and most users would be comfortable with direct
advertising. Forums and social channels would discourage direct
advertising messages

 Two types of conversations are happening online:

 People unhappy about their experience go online and vent their
feelings
 People and experts are talking about credit cards, interest rates,
offers, etc on blogs, forums, articles, comparison charts, etc
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Example 3/3:
Do not expect 50k card sign-ups in 2
months
1. You are a bank, and want to promote a new credit card
2. You estimate that social media has the potential to deliver an additional 30% leads @ $3
per lead
3. Perhaps not

 Approach 1: Monitor and gather REAL feedback on the

product, and invest in REAL online customer satisfaction
 Engage directly with all unhappy customers, as the Bank’s authorized representatives
 Address customer’s unhappiness in a fair manner (charge-back? transaction reversal?)
 Take feedback to the product team, and try (at least try) to provide what the market
demands
 Real word-of-mouth will spread, and cost of acquisition could drop to 50% of current
channels!

 Of course, it would require REAL intention on part of the bank, and top management
sponsorship

© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 22

Example 3/3:
Do not expect 50k card sign-ups in 2
months
1. You are a bank, and want to promote a new credit card
2. You estimate that social media has the potential to deliver an additional 30%
leads @ $3 per lead
3. Perhaps not
4. Approach 1: Monitor and gather REAL feedback on the product, and invest in
REAL online customer satisfaction

5. Approach 2: (1) Invest in creating non-branded

assets of value (microsites, apps, etc), such as
product comparators, that push the Bank’s products
on genuine grounds. Product comparators can move beyond
static website pages to RSS, desktop based, experts with channels on
(2) Invest in winning over experts
YouTube, Twitter, etc.
or establishing experts over a period of time
Establish a METRIC >>
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 Establishing Reach Metric

Channels Reach for a month Conversations per Total Reach

per upload month, per person
/conversation

YouTube 500 30 15000

Forums 400 30 12000

Blogs 50 30 1500

Social Networking 400 60 24000

Sites
Q&A 100 60 6000

Image marketing 10 30 300

Social Bookmarking 10 100 1000

Sites
Polls 10 10 100

Application 100 10 1000

Others (twitter, etc) 500 50 30000

Total ~100,000
Very approximate! Will depend on your
domain, channels you choose, etc
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Plan for “Normal” and “Mean” Results

“It is no mean happiness

therefore, to be seated in
EMAIL

the mean…” – Shakespeare,

PPC
BANNERS

The Merchant of Venice

SEO

Try and be here! 

Last Slide NEXT >>

© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 25
 Take-away Tips

1. Create a metrics model, however crude

2. Benchmark cost of acquisition from other
channels
3. Take initial learning as investment
4. Do not be afraid of experimenting
5. Start small
6. Do not market blatantly – it can be counter-
productive
(How-to of Social marketing? See other webinars on www.regalix.com,
or write to us)

About Regalix >> Questions??

© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 26
 About Regalix

 Forefront of Online Marketing,  visit: www.regalix.com

Research and Web 2.0 portals

 Multi-disciplinary Leadership Team  For a free evaluation of your social

marketing plan, please get in touch
 Fortune 500 and Venture-Backed with Namrata Kumar,
Customers (B2B and B2C) namrata@regalix-inc.com
 Global Operations: HQ in Silicon
Valley, 4 Offices  If you have any questions about
social media, PPC, digital marketing,
 150+ Team, Built on 8+ years of etc please feel free to get in touch
research with the speaker Nimish Vohra,
nvohra@regalix-inc.com
 Recognition

Questions >>
© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 27
 Questions?

1. How to divide connections into different groups for

different target areas?
A bit of a problem! For most social networks every connection is equal
(friend, contact, …). Use an external layer (excel, custom
development) depending on your exact need

2. How do people integrate social media with their CRM

systems?
Depends on your exact need or goal (traffic on site, footfalls, email,
DRIP marketing, etc). Very crudely, when a lead can be tracked to a
social media channel, assign a lead source and export to your existing
CRM system.

3. What strategies can be used to attract "followers"?

Make the content unique or valuable (of course!). Begin with following
people who might be interested in your content. Make the profile
image human, and attractive  it works!
© 2009 Confidential | Think Innovation 28