Salespeople have a hard time.

If you are lucky they will join your organisation with a network of contacts that will help them generate immediate revenue. It may even be enough to cover their first quarter’s wages. However, there comes a point where the low hanging fruit runs out and opportunity generation gets a whole lot more difficult.

Traditional prospecting soaks up newly appointed sales professionals’ time. Attendance at trade shows is time consuming and expensive. But it will help the salesperson connect with several potential clients. Cold calling can be soul destroying (and not particularly productive) but it sometimes delivers results.

The problem is that while salespeople are concentrating on generating opportunities, they are unlikely to progress many sales. In addition, the skill set employed in prospecting is different to the skills required for face to face meetings. So whilst the pipeline of potential meetings is being built, skills are getting rusty and new business revenue is non-existent or at best, minimal.

Field salespeople are most effective when they are in front of potential customers (not when they are researching a database). Separating prospecting from field sales releases your newly appointed sales professional from the drudgery of cold calling and lead nurturing. They get to focus on what they are good at: selling (after all, it is what they get paid for).

Internal salespeople (or an appointed agency) can quickly build databases: verifying email addresses and direct dial telephone numbers. When combined with well structured knowledge based lead nurturing campaigns, internal salespeople can identify potential opportunities and set appointments. Prospects are more likely to agree to a meeting if it is arranged by the individual with whom they have had an ongoing dialogue. So it makes sense to transfer a lead once the appointment has been arranged.

Separating the two distinct disciplines of opportunity generation with sales progression will improve performance. Individuals can hone their respective skills and the whole sales process becomes far more productive.

Businesses spend millions of pounds each year generating opportunities they do not follow up.

In most cases organisations have efficient, effective marketing departments and well trained, skillful sales professionals. But the problem is co-ordination. Trade shows will produce leads and mail shots (physical and email) do result in enquiries. Even cold – call telemarketing can (in the right circumstances) be effective.

What Happens to Marketing Leads?

Co-ordinating marketing and sales effort is challenging for large and small organisations. The act of processing, qualifying and assigning leads to salespeople takes time. Further delays occur when the leads are passed to sales. People are busy and a salesperson may not get through to the prospect for several days.

‘Dropping the baton’ between marketing and sales is a waste of valuable marketing resource. Calling a once warm prospect weeks after the initial contact is the equivalent of a shop assistant turning up at your front door and asking if they can help you with a coat you were looking at three weeks ago. The call is likely to be inappropriate, unwelcome and slightly disorientating.

When to Pass the Baton?

As in athletics, passing the baton at the right time transfers responsibility with no loss of momentum. If your salespeople are responsible for making calls and booking appointments from ‘warm’ marketing leads you are probably passing the baton too early. Complaints about ‘poor quality leads’ certainly indicate premature handover.

Timing the transfer of responsibility is likely to vary between organisations however, there are a couple of principles that should be adhered to.

Who is Responsible?

If marketing are to attract, nurture and get the lead qualified ready for sales then responsibility for oppointment setting should be with your marketing or tele-qualification team. The principle is simple. If contact and relationship building has been done by the inside sales team then it makes sense for that relationship to be leveraged when asking for an appointment.

After all, it is marketing’s job to make sure salespeople have a good pipeline of well qualified opportunites and meetings. It also makes sense from the prospect’s perspective. A clear separation of responsibility: field sales for physical sales meetings and telesales for qualification and appointment setting.

Improving Performance

Getting your marketing department (or external agency) to set appointments delivers two valuable management tools: Quality and quantity management. An appointment is a clear and unambiguous deliverable. No-one can argue of the voracity of the ‘lead’ if they are willing to take an appointment. But the quality of appointments is also important: does the prospect have Authority, Need, Budget?

So, you can measure the quantity and quality (and therefore improve) marketing performance. And if your salespeople are being given good quality appointments, you can also measure their performance: how are they progressing the opportunity and how many appointments turn into business.

Most salespeople miss their targets.

Or put another way: most salespeople fail.

This appalling situation has a detrimental effect on morale, individuals and ultimately the business. The paradox is that sales professionals are by nature competitive; they love winning. The financial and personal benefits associated with hitting the numbers means that they will pull out all the stops to make their targets.

So why are so many failing?

Often businesses blame poor selling skills (but given the financial reward, most salespeople hone their skills to perfection). Salespeople often blame the products, the company or marketing (but most products can be sold and marketing will produce leads).

The real reason sales professionals miss targets because too much time is taken in unproductive activity.

Being Productive

It might sound too simplistic but to hit targets salespeople need to meet prospects only when there is a qualified opportunity. This reduces the actual number of meetings attended and allows the salesperson to focus their attention on managing the opportunity.

Unfortunately salespeople often waste hours and days on non-productive opportunities. One of the greatest wastes is cold calling or prospecting. It does not make economic sense for salespeople to do their own lead and meeting generation. Look at the numbers:

Sales person’s target: £500,000

Average Sale: £20,000

With a generous 1 in 4 win ratio, to hit target your salesperson needs to make 8 good sales appointments per month. If they are generating their own meetings (and just allowing one day per week for the activity) they are likely to average just 4 good sales meetings per month. i.e. they will only hit 50% of target.

Increasing the number of days spent prospecting simply reduces the number of days available for meetings and administration.

Organise for success

Getting field sales professionals in front of qualified prospects is the surest way of hitting targets. But they need support to achieve this.

Telesales teams: internal or external can develop the opportunities needed for your teams to hit their targets but they also need support and direction. Cold calling by telemarketers does not guarantee a stream of well qualified meetings. Targeting these teams simply on numbers can result in poor quality meetings and more unproductive activity.

The surest way of generating qualified opportunities is by co-ordinating marketing and telemarketing efforts. Knowledge based digital marketing campaign will identify individuals with an interest in your proposition. Your telemarketing team are then in a position to call, further qualify and set appointments where appropriate.

Separate appointment setting and field sales, provide marketing support, co-ordinate the activity and you will have a sales team that is motivated, happy and exceeds its targets.

Many organisations dipping their toes into the fast flowing waters of Social Media get cold feet. The medium just does not deliver the returns they expect or worse, they make a social faux pas and wind up with a major PR exercise.

It is a fact that Social Media Marketing is effective, it delivers great results and, as traditional media makes way for the Internet, it is the way all organisations will market in the very near future.

Individuals inevitably fail when they tackle a job with the wrong tools (Ever tried to water a garden with a sieve?). Digital Media Marketing is no different: you need the right set of tools (and experienced tradesmen) if you are going to succeed. This blog outlines the infrastructure we believe organisations need to have in order to execute campaigns effectively.

Basic Infrastructure: The Principles

Social Media is just like any other media; there are assets you own and have complete control of, assets you ‘hire’ and have temporary control of and assets you neither own nor control but which you may be able to influence.

Unfortunately it is this latter group of assets that has the greatest impact upon your success.

The success of any campaign will depend upon the way you employ your owned and hired assets: get it right and you’ll be surfing the face of a social wave with skill and style. Get it wrong and you’ll be wiped out and eating sand.

A sound architecture is needed before launching a successful campaign. Make sure your controlled assets are properly linked to the right ‘uncontrolled assets’ and that you have done your media planning meticulously. Just like in the traditional world, you need to get your message in front of the right audience.

www.get-itadvantage.com

Build for interactivity: independent, unaffiliated assets have interactivity built as part of their core functionality; it is what makes these assets popular. Make sure that when your audience uses your assets, they can exchange ideas freely and chat, preferably in real time.

The old adage ‘the harder I work the luckier I get’ is possibly more appropriate for Social Media. Your contributions to debate have to be regular, thought through and engaging.

Basic Infrastructure: The Assets Interactive ‘Blogsite’ or ‘Micro Site’

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It is highly likely that your website is unsuited for use in Social Media campaigns. Typically websites suffer from a lack of interactivity, inappropriate information structures or insufficient relevant collateral.

But even if everything was perfect, a corporate site is unlikely to ‘work’ in the Social Media space. Put simply: people will not chat and interact if they think they are going to be watched and sold to.

A Micro Site designed for blogging can provide the necessary distance between the audience and the organisation. Micro Sites can be issue or campaign driven and hold a wealth of information and collateral.

Sponsored pages

The company’s Facebook page might not get a lot of activity; it may be good for keeping friends (customers and staff) informed of events but it generally won’t generate the heated and useful discussions that help to develop the next killer product (or sell more of your existing product). There are exceptions, particularly if the product and company are synonymous: Promoting Bands, Celebrities and Events can be very effective on social media sites.

For most organisations, setting pages up which focus on the product or the issue is more effective than ‘The company page’. Product recall, complaint and feedback pages can help organisations get a feel for sentiment in the wider world. Some of these sites will be developed anyway – ‘I hate HP (HP Sucks)’ is a real group on facebook.

Twitter and other Micro Blogs

Too many people take Twitter at its word and just make noise. Don’t. It is annoying, will lose brand value and corporate credibility. Only ‘Twitter’ if you have something important to say that adds value for your target audience.

A good Tweet is the equivalent of a great email subject line.

But you need something to back it up with. Direct followers to your assets: your micro sites, webcasts and blogs. Used effectively Twitter will build your database and audience.

eMail

Do not forget your email audience; many will be waiting for your next instalment: it is how they prefer to consume your material. It is likely years have been spent cultivating a readership of customers and prospects. Do not forget them.

eMail is still the number one lead generation vehicle. Effective marketers are already executing co-ordinated eMail campaigns that incorporate social media and delivering great results.

Non Owned Assets

Perhaps the biggest mistakes are made by organisations experimenting with Social Media through membership of groups such as LinkedIn. They actively promote products or services: a strategy that inevitably backfires. Rather than increasing market share they shrink it. Discussion and interest groups actively exchange ideas on subjects and issues that directly affect your business. To get involved you need to pose questions and offer opinion. Direct discussion as an effective chairperson would.

It is possible to improve your organisations profile and mindshare within the ‘uncontrolled asset’ space. But your contributions will have to demonstrate expertise and your questions will need to precipitate lively debate.

How to get it working

A client recently told me that senior management wanted to get involved in social media because it was free.

Skill and expertise built up over years in digital communications are unlikely to be cheap and they are certainly never ‘free’. Whilst digital media may be more cost effective (and measurable)  than traditional channels, you will need a team of experts actively planning and expediting your campaigns. And it is a full, not a part-time, job.

When it comes to lead generation too many organisations rely on third party lists (or poor quality ‘in-house’ lists).

The results are always disappointing and frequently appalling.

Well designed, updated and administered emailable databases will deliver results well above industry standards. If you are currently experiencing open rates below 15% and ‘click through’ rates lower than 10% then you may wish to read further.

What is an eMailable database?

Well it is more than a list of names and email addresses of ‘prospects’. A database consists of:

1. Individuals with whom you have an active or latent commercial relationship.

2. Individual, personal email addresses.

3. Individual permission to communicate via email.

4. Individual intelligence: you know exactly where the individual is in the buying cycle.

Note the use of individual: email marketing is not mass marketing. Organisations and colleagues who talk of ‘eshots’ and ‘email blasts’ just do not get it; they need education. An emailable database is a valuable resource that delivers regular revenue. A simple list will perform badly, damage your digital reputation and cost you money.

Jonathan Calver’s White Paper on ‘How to Build an eMailable Database‘ provides an insight into what it takes to start improving your campaign rates. If you would like it: Click Here

Building rather than buying your list.

When you build your own database you embed value:

1. It contains historical data: all the interactions you have had with the individuals in the database.

2. It is far more responsive than a ‘bought list’ or sending campaigns via third parties.

5 List Building Strategies:

1. Raid the Sales Team.

They might not like it at first but when you start to deliver real opportunities into their laps they will soon forgive you. Your sales team will have built up some serious intelligence on potential customers: it belongs to the company, not on a sales executives private spreadsheet, outlook file or notebook. Do not underestimate the level of authority you may need to extract this information. But the leads belong to the company, not the individual.

2. Purchase a list to get you started

Working in conjunction with telemarketing (either internally or externally) a bought list can provide you with enough information to start really building intelligence into your database. Remember, at this point you are not selling. You are simply getting enough information and permission to start email campaigns.

3. Telemarketing with a valuable offer

If you cold call someone, ask for their email address and permission to email, you will probably get a ‘No’. Hopefully it will be a polite, ‘not company policy’ rather than a short expletive! However, if you have a valuable offer of interest: a Sample, White Paper’, ‘Case Study’ etc. you are far more likely to get a positive response. And if the individual appreciates the offer, you will have started to build the commercial relationship.

4. Convert your Direct Mail list to an eMail list

Look at your most responsive, regular direct mail contacts. Working with them first to attain their email address should be relatively easy: they already have a relationship with you and should be willing to provide email addresses.

5. Use social media & website interactions to capture data

Many organisations have ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ options on their websites. But they don’t deliver that many quality leads. However, if you provide useful information through social networking sites (blogs, White papers etc). people will access that information and provide you with their email address as a quid pro quo. If you then match your communications to their stage of the buying cycle you will start to build a strong pipeline of potential business.

Take your time

Building a valuable resource like an emailable database takes time. Do not expect to have 30,000 individuals waiting to receive your next email in two weeks time. Rather, focus on quality. 200 good quality emailable records per month will deliver read rates above 40% and click throughs of around 30%. That will significantly improve your digital reputation. It will also improve the quality of the leads that are passed to your sales team.

If you would like to read the full White Paper Click here

Businesses lose thousands every day through ineffective telemarketing.

No matter how well trained or dedicated, telemarketing professionals without proper support and pre-planning will lose opportunities and marketing investment will be wasted. The damage will be significant: poor telemarketing execution damages reputations. There are brands and companies synonymous with ‘hard sell’: you do not want to be counted amongst them.

Where did those leads go?

Most companies have thought leadership campaigns and generate significant interest on their blogs and websites. Direct mail pieces are well thought through and targeted. Email campaigns are effective; white papers are downloaded and visitor numbers increase. But despite doing ‘everything right’ companies still fail to develop a reasonable number of opportunities for the investment made.

The problem is that poor co-ordination and a lack of timely information means that most leads generated by marketing are wasted.

Often, getting a complete record of an individual’s interactions with an organisation is difficult if not impossible. Leads get passed to telemarketing because they ‘downloaded a White Paper’ but the neither telemarketer nor the company know that the prospect accessed the company’s website on several separate occasions, read case studies and product information.

Put simply data collection is not sophisticated enough to spot opportunities. Jonathan Calver discusses how to address this issue in ‘Lead Profiling to Accelerate Sales’.

For a copy: Click here

The second problem is that telemarketing agencies (and even internal sales resources) respond too late.

There is only one thing that cools faster than a ‘warm lead’ and that is a ‘hot lead’.

When someone is pre-disposed to purchase; customer service rules. Take your time over recognising their interest and they are likely to find another vendor. The fact is your prospects are bombarded with information on a daily basis. Getting a spreadsheet with 200 ‘warm leads’ to your telemarketing agency within 48 hours is no longer good enough. You are effectively giving the agency a list to cold call. And the results will be poor.

Telemarketing can only be effective if leads are processed immediately.

Getting it right

With multiple agencies, different departments, products, divisions and campaigns, getting everyone onto the same page may appear to be an impossible task. But it is not. Infrastructure and systems exist that link each element of your campaigns, your team and your marketplace. And they do it securely: you do not have to let third parties into your databases.

The Paper: Marketing Operations, shows how companies can co-ordinate multiple campaigns with feeds from Web Analytics through to eMail and deliver a 360 degree picture of a prospect directly to a telemarketer who can act on it.

If you would like it: Click Here

Telemarketing can be effective when supported by good planning and co-ordinated execution. That way your agents will be calling the right person, at the right time and have the right conversation.

It’s the dream: set up a web shop, fill it with exciting new products, make checkout and shipping easy, sit back and wait for the millions to roll in.

But success is never simple.

Getting an eCommerce site up and running is just the start. To attract customers you need to build the right web presence. This is not the same as Search Engine Optimisation, a site with not particularly good SEO can regularly outperform search engine optimised sites, provided the site administrator gets the web presence right.

Web Presence

Put simply, web presence is just ‘being there’. Getting in front of the right eyes at the right time. Two years ago this meant getting a good page position when someone searched for your product or services on Google. But habits change and so should your tactics.

The Shopping Mall Analogy.

Mall shopping is more than a simple way to acquire essential items. It is a social event. Malls contain cinemas, eateries, coffee outlets and, oh yes, shops. Success in the Mall means attracting footfall. A similar approach is needed if your eCommerce site is to be effective.

Over the last couple of years the internet has become a playground: a place for entertainment and people now use the web differently. Facebook provides social engagment, You Tube, entertainment and a ‘slew’ of gaming sites have been set up.

To get noticed, to attract footfall, you need to get your offers and posters out into the Internet Mall. But blanket marketing and advertising becomes very expensive, very quickly.

The Internet as a Series of ‘Hot Spots’

Noticed how market traders with the best patter attract the largest crowds? It is the same online; you need good patter to attract attention. Comment knowledgeby and regularly on products and developments in your marketplace and you will develop a following. But it is not enough to simply create that following on your own site.

In the same way that posters and leaflet distributors direct shoppers in the Mall to particular retail outlets, you need to blogs, groups and fan pages that direct people to your site. Build these assets in hot spots, where your customers congregate. Create hot spots of your own: authoritative, entertaining content and customers will come flocking.

And you do not have to do all the work yourself. Atracting 4,000 interested shoppers to your site each month might deliver a respectable income but a network of 200 affiliates and recommenders will deliver an obscene income.

Building your eCommerce site is just the start. Success only looks easy when you have done all the hard work: building the blogs, creating the content, attracting a following and recruiting your affiliates.

Good luck.

Last week we promised we would show you how digital marketing can help you compete for and win new business. The following article is the result of over ten years experience, thousands of successful client campaigns (and quite a few successful campaigns of our own). It should help you design and execute your own revenue generating activity.

Attraction is not enough

There are plenty of marketing agencies and ‘experts’ who will wax lyrical about search engine optimisation, pay per click campaigns, even social marketing. The hard fact is that no matter how attractive and ‘on brand’ your site is and no matter how much you spend getting noticed on line, it will not deliver a return on investment. In fact many executives see the company website as an ‘Internet Tax’: they know they have to pay for a website and invest in getting it prominant but they also know that (in most cases) the business generated does not equal the money invested.

The reason is that for major considered purchases people buy from people: not websites. Who amongst you would invest tens of thousands of pounds on a software system simply by searching the web, popping the product in your virtual shopping basket and proceeding to the checkout?

Most B2B products are complex a mixture of product, service and require a long term partnership if the purchase is going to provide a good return on investment.

Simply ‘hanging out a website’ will not do. Organisations have to be pro-active.

Getting Pro-Active (the wrong way)

Most companies use tried and tested methods to promote their business. If every other lemming is heading to the ‘Trade Show’ we should tag along; shouldn’t we? I have never heard an argument for trade show attendance that did not sound like an excuse:

• ‘We have to go to be seen’.
• ‘If we win just one piece of business it will pay for itself’.
• ‘It is a great networking opportunity’.

So companies spend upwards of £30,000 just to share their competitive positioning and sales materials with all their competitors!

Do not think that you’ll be entertaining lots of qualified buyers on your stand: most trade show attendees are the office staff on a day out (competing to see who can collect the most freebees). If there are any senior buyers, the day will have been planned and they are likely to be evaluating options or doing due diligence before making a major purchase. If you know about the opportunity and have had a chance to progress through the early stages of the sale, great, (you do not need to be at the show). If you don’t know about the opportunity, forget it: at this stage you are unlikely to influence the outcome.

Another popular waste of money is outbound cold calling/telemarketing. It simply does not work.

Telemarketers are targeted on identifying opportunities. So guess what? They identify some. No matter how poorly qualified, the telemarketer, desperate to make the mortgage payment that month, will grasp at any straw to hit the numbers: the result is a slew of poorly qualified names and telephone numbers that will leave your sales professionals exasperated.

And do not get me started on mailshots.

Next to cold calling, junk mail is the next most hated form of marketing. Poorly directed, often irrelevant, rarely read: if you want to annoy the marketplace, associate your company with the destruction of the rainforests and melting the polar ice cap. Then be my guest: plan a mailshot today!

To get a mail noticed you will have to spend thousands designing a new and ingenious piece of origami that delights and amuses. This creates two commercial risks: if the prospect hasn’t had their eye taken out by the mailshot springing out of the carton, they are more likely to be interested in the origami than your product. (Unless, of course, you are an origami producer).

Getting Pro-Active (the right way)

Digital marketing can and does deliver significant return on investment. The website does not have to be a cost centre: it can be the source of your success. Intelligent marketing blends outbound digital activity with networking and information sharing. It enables discourse with your company, allowing you to craft well thought through and robust business arguments with prospects and customers. But it requires infrastructure, co-ordination and sustained effort.

Doing ‘an email blast’ is neither intelligent nor blended. Organisations that view their website as a living, changing beast are starting to win new business and post good growth. Remarkable in a time of financial austerity and economic uncertainty.

But there have to be losers. Perhaps they can be seen flocking down a motorway to an exhibition near you?

An Invitation

APM Digital are inviting business leaders, sales and marketing directors from finance, technology, engineering and consultancy firms to discuss and debate business generation over lunch at a central London location. Attendance is by invitation only and will not exceed eight. The guest list will not include direct competitors.

If you would like to join the debate either leave a comment and register your interest in the ‘London Debate’.

If your website was created eight months ago it is unlikely to be effective: because Google has deemed it to be out of date.

By autumn last year, Google’s Real Time Web Search had started to deliver results based upon timeliness and relevance. Which means that, if you do not update content frequently, your visibility to search engines will suffer.

Why is this an issue?

The fact is companies spend thousands on designing, building and populating their websites with compelling (search engine friendly) content. Building these sites takes time, plenty of late night discussions and heaps of intellectual, psychological and emotional energy. Renewing or replacing your website isn’t something most companies want to repeat on a regular basis. However, the trend is for search to take more notice of the latest events and information posted on social media and news sites.

And most company websites are just not (and arguably should not be) built for this kind of activity. The company website, the foundation of your web-presence and embodiment of your brand will simply slide from view. And slide very quickly.

So, if your company website is part of your marketing activity you need to think seriously about how you are going to compete for prominence.

Playing by the new rules

Google, Yahoo, Ask et al. have changed the rules: they are looking for recent, fresh information and they are looking for it in places traditional company websites do not inhabit. This does not mean you have to throw away your carefully crafted and expensive website: far from it. But it does mean you are going to have to stretch your presence across the web.

Social Media may have started out as a teenagers’ playground: a place to swap music, post video and hang out. It has rapidly evolved into a powerful business medium. LinkedIn membership exceeded 50 million professionals last October and it has been adding a million members every 12 days since. A political campaign without a social media element has, within the last eighteen months, become unthinkable.

The message is simple: a traditional company website is no longer enough. To build reputation and presence your organisation needs to compete in the social media space.

Getting it right

This is not about opening a ‘Twitter’ account and telling the world what you had for breakfast. It is about sharing useful information with your supporters, customers and potential customers. The 140-character limit of a ‘Twitter’ post is unlikely to carry that kind of information.

Companies need to develop a network of assets that have the flexibility to be updated regularly and be intrinsically linked to the ‘social web’. A good place to start is with a Blog. But care has to be taken. Many blogs exist in obscure and crowded spaces. Companies that start blogging on a shared ‘blogging’ provider find it difficult to get visited or read. Executives become disheartened when carefully drafted articles attract no interest. And the activity is retired early as an interesting experiment but ‘of limited use.’

To be effective, your blog needs its own place on the web (a distinct web address), active management (a designated editor in chief who ensures quality articles are published regularly) and co-ordinated campaigning (email, PR, social postings) to ensure all your hard work does not languish in obscurity.

The rewards can be great: after six months activity small IT support company in Cambridgeshire started to win significant volumes of new business.

Next week we will look at developing strategies for the new competitive environment.

Facebook can be dangerous for business.

Many organisations have rushed blindly into putting up a facebook page and engaging via Twitter without analysing the potential downside. Just like any powerful tool, facebook has to be treated with care; there are benefits but get it wrong and your organisation could lose money and reputation.

Before launching your facebook campaign consider the following:

This space is not for rent.

Facebook allows anyone freedom to create just about any group, provided it is legal and decent. Many organisations have taken advantage. They have increased their web presence and built an enviable following of loyal supporters. However, investing significant time, effort and money in third party assets could be short-sighted.

Social sites can and do shut down groups. Every facebook user has the right to report any group and many social sites take a ‘risk adverse’ approach. So, if someone complains (even without justification) that your group is misleading, you are likely to be shut down. You will not only lose reputation; you will lose you contacts and all the investment in building your group.

Policies change: what might be free today may become very expensive tomorrow. We have seen how Google mutated from a completely free service to the most powerful advertising organisation on earth. Today facebook has over 300 million subscribers and it is starting to flex its commercial muscle. We simply do not know how long commercial group pages will remain free.

Dangerous praise

Word of mouth marketing is great but again, it is not without risk. False claims made on your behalf by a well meaning but misinformed supporter could prove costly, especially if your company initiated the process. For example: if an organisation provides a product free to consumers it is potentially liable for any misleading  blog posts.

Ouch.

You could be forgiven for wanting to return to a simpler time; when all your advertisements were vetted by the legal department before publication!

All that lovely data

The social media business is all about data collection and consumer profiling. Knowing, on a massive scale, individual preferences, hobbies and lifestyles is a marketers dream. But it also creates risk for organisations. A successful facebook group will have thousands of followers. Create an application: a game or interactive survey and you will obtain a great deal of information about your consumers. This information not only has to be protected, it has to be collected in accordance with local data protection laws. And how often do you see a privacy statement or terms of use link on a facebook page?

That’s right. Not often.

In enthusiastically following a social media strategy organisations could be unwittingly setting themselves up for potentially expensive litigation. Organisations need to understand the sensitive nature of information that flows through social media. They should recognise the serious compliance and litigation risks that the collection and distribution of such information entails.

There are contractual tools to mitigate these risks, including properly drafted privacy policies and terms of use. A trip to your legal department will help you understand your obligations under all applicable data privacy and security laws, and help you build a nuts and bolts plan to meet those obligations.

Just because there are risks, does not mean you should not do it

Social media is the marketing phenomenon of the new millennia. It provides great opportunities to really understand customers on an individual basis and to engage in deep and meaningful dialogue. It has already started to revolutionise industry and the genie cannot be put back into the bottle. Organisations looking to benefit from the medium can, provided they treat social media with the respect it deserves.