The Conversion Scientist™

What is Your Social Conversion Rate?

New presentation debuts at Innotech eMarketing Summit in Portland

After collaborating for a ClickZ article on Social Conversion with Dave Evans, I was pleased to get an opportunity to work with him to expand on the topic. I presented the topic at the eMarketing Summit during Innotech Portland 2009.

This is a topic that is moving quickly, and I suspect you will have something to say. Please do.

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We Are Actively Dismantling Your Trusted Marketing Strategies

From the Society of Word of Mouth comes this little post about the change in marketing. It’s more serious than you might think.

“It is no longer sufficient to communicate powerfully, you must say something powerful.”

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Drilling in on Social Conversion Strategies

Dave Evans is one of the smartest guys in Social Media today and has the ability to ask questions that make you stop and think. Really think. So, when he asked my opinion on where social media meets conversion strategy, I really had to think.

The result of our collaboration is his latest ClickZ article Social Conversions: Taking Step Two. For me, the process crystallized the reasons that so many of us have trouble seeing the ROI in social marketing. We’re looking at it wrong.

I will expand here on how we use inappropriate strategies for our social marketing campaigns. In subsequent posts, I’ll drill down on some of the strategies mentioned in the column and show you how they work.

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The Flaw in our Social Marketing Model

Dave’s article hints at the way we use old measures of success in new paradigms. We see social media as simply another way to drive traffic to our traditional conversion funnels.

With this model, we try to cram our social strategies into the Awareness portion of the marketing funnel. While this is a valid use of social marketing, it is it’s most limited.

We try to stuff our social media strategies into the top of the marketing funnel.

When we realize that there is a whole world of conversion after the purchase we begin to use our social marketing more strategically.

Strategic Social Marketing

We can use social media strategically when we apply it to the post-purchase portion of the funnel

This expanded model for social media let’s us use social channels more strategically.

Instead of asking, “How can we use video to drive more traffic to us?” we can instead ask, “How can we use video to increase use of our offering?”

Instead of asking, “How can we use Facebook to build a list of prospects?” we can ask, “How can we use Facebook to get people talking about our product?”

Can you see how we would apply social marketing in a more purposeful way when we change our point of view? Doesn’t it become clearer how we would measure the success of our social campaigns beyond just traffic and page views? If you answered “Well, kinda,” don’t worry.

I’ll be exploring best practices for some of the strategies mentioned in the Social Conversion article, including:

• Use of notification emails which “are among the most overlooked opportunities for engaging new product users.”
• Designing a blog that converts buyers to users, users to opinion, and opinion to talk.
• B2B implementation circles

Keep up with the conversation. Subscribe to The Conversion Scientist and the Conversion Scientist Podcast. Don’t miss a post.

For a complete understanding of the marketing funnel, read Dave’s book Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day.