Chapter 13

reach

is a classic measure of the size of the audience that has been exposed to some brand information and who might therefore have some familiarity with the brand. -Reach can be achieved via traditional media and measured via online capture, e.g., as in a magazine ad that tempts the reader to learn more by going online and landing at a particular page associated with the magazine source. -Reach can also be achieved wholly online, as a function of ads on popular sites, purchased status on search engines, even via click-throughs on annoying banner ads.

network

is defined as the set of actors (or nodes) and the relational ties that link them.

Structural equivalence

is the other pattern sought when analyzing networks. Two actors are said to be structurally equivalent if their links to others are the same -is the logic underlying recommendation agents employed by big SKU-offering sites like Amazon. -Two customers are essentially equivalent if their purchase patterns are similar; whatever one buys, the other might also find appealing. -Thus, a recommendation is made based on similarities between the SKUs bought by one customer compared with those bought by others. These systems are still far from perfect, but they'll clearly be around (and better articulated) in the future -Recommendation systems are an odd manifestation of social media. They are social in that the data of purchase patterns or ratings are aggregated over many people, but ultimately these endorsements come from strangers

social media

is usually applied to people interacting and connecting with others via online software or with alternative electronic access technologies (e.g., their smartphones). -There are three main properties: >>>>Offers rich sensory experiences >>>>Social media sites differ >>>>Vary with regard to whether the interactions arae pointedly commercial

actors

may be customers, firms, brands, concepts, countries, etc.

True or false? The most fundamental means of interaction is a dialogue. In social media, customers have become participants in a dialogue with marketers or brands.

true

True or false? To do so, network marketers study how actors are embedded in their network to locate those who are relatively central—in the thick of things. Centrality indices are computed for each actor in the network to describe his or her position relative to the others.

true

What are the measures of brand consideration?

-Frequencies -Durations -Rates

Describe how traditional media are experiencing changes:

-Newspaper circulations are declining. While optimists continue to launch new magazines every year, magazines' overall sales and circulations are down as well. -The number of radio stations has grown, boosted by satellite servers such as XM or Sirius. But listeners are tuned in for less time each day than just a few years ago. -Television channels also continue to grow. The bad news about this fragmentation is that, with more TV channels, the audience for any given show is typically smaller (consumers are spread thin across the multitude of options). The good news is that targeting is facilitated when the segments of viewers are somewhat more homogeneous.

Describe how consumers trust online recommendations:

-When consumers read an endorsement in a chat room dedicated to a sport they follow or a health condition they are monitoring, they usually make the assumption that others who visit the Website, read it, and post to it are similar to themselves and hence bring credibility and relevance. -When consumers read a rating of a book or piece of music online, they usually make the assumption that the majority of people can't be too far from wrong.

sociogram

Networks are often depicted in graphical form

Describe recommendation agents:

Recommendation agents are another form of CRM. Companies keep track of your purchases and then they match you with other customers whose purchases have had some overlap with yours. The implication is that you and these other customers are probably in the same segment and have similar preferences. Thus, things they've bought and you haven't form the system's recommendations to you, and things you've bought but they have not are recommended to them.

relational ties (or links)

The connections between the actors. -Ties can be symmetric ("X and Y are coworkers") or directional ("X likes Y"), and they can be binary or vary in strength.

Who gets word of mouth and who doesnt?

The most WOM occurs for: -Restaurants and Movies. WOM helps because consumers seek novelty and variety. -Computers. WOM helps reduce perceptions of risk, due to the products' expense, and most consumers lacking technical expertise. WOM occurs much less for: -Medicines and Financial Products. They're personal. -Simple or Inconspicuous Goods. WOM isn't necessary or exciting.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

for social media are analogous to traditional measures for advertising effectiveness. -Specifically, marketers are always interested in quantifying reach, frequency, monetary value of customers, customers' behaviors, attitudes, memory (recall, recognition), and so on. -In social media, measures for these marketing goals simply take on slightly different forms.

ROI

questions only if we know the goal that the marketing action was intended to achieve. -Once we know the goals, selecting the media and measures is rather straightforward. -when estimating ROI, the primary expenditures might not be so much media buys or explicit budgetary contributions as salary equivalents of people's time allocations. In this sense, time is indeed money. >>>>>Early on, social media held the allure that they looked to be nearly free. The approach is certainly less expensive than advertising via many kinds of traditional media. Every day, something seems to go viral, yielding vast reach essentially for free, fueling the hopes that future marketing efforts will be extremely cost-effective. But managers know now that marketing via social media is not free. At the least, their 24/7 maintenance requires thought and labor.

sociomatrix

tabular representation of networks that allows for analysis

SEO gurus say there are two important paths to enhancing the likelihood that a brand pops to the top of the search results. What are they?

-Put the most meaningful keywords in the Webpage title. Page titles are very important to SEO. -The order of those words also matters, so lead off with the most relevant ones.

What are the two reasons why the word of mouth generator is fairly easy?

(1) You can see how easy these indices are calculate. (2) Distributions of links in most networks follow an 80/20 rule, in that most of the links are connected to a small number of actors.1 Thus, when you're staring at a network graph, or when you're having a computer analyze its sociomatrix, you have to be kind of dense to miss them.

Describe word of mouth:

-A particularly important phenomenon for business is that social media facilitates word-ofmouth (WOM). 0-Long before social media technology, marketers have known that customer word-of-mouth is very powerful. Consumers view ads with some skepticism, knowing that the point of the message is persuasion. -By comparison, if a customer hears the endorsement of a brand from a friend, that message is seen as more objective because the friend presumably has nothing to gain from making such assertions. -Word-of-mouth works on naturally exciting products, where the notion of buzz makes sense. -Yet creative brand managers have launched clever ad campaigns that get talked about even for pretty mundane products too. -The key is that the product and the message are meaningful to the customer. The hook can be humor, a give-away, or support of social causes. -Distinct from whether the product category seems WOM-worthy, some extroverted consumers generate more word-of-mouth (positive and negative) than others. Word-of-mouth travels via communication in social networks, so let's understand those structures.

Describe the three properties of social media:

-First, some social media offer very rich, vivid sensory experiences, such as virtual worlds or video games, with their dynamic sights and sounds that compel the user to interact and engage. By comparison, other social media seem relatively simple, even impoverished, such as blogs and forums, which tend to resemble little more than protracted strings of emails. -Second, social media differ from one another in that some are primarily social in nature, such as social network sites, which serve as places to asynchronously hang out with friends. On spaces like Facebook, friends chat and share photos, music, and videos. Sharing slices of life with friends is the goal. Other media have more industrious goals, such as collaborating on wiki content, seeking jobs via professional sites like LinkedIn, or reading technical blogs to extract advice from experts. -Third, social media vary with regard to whether the interactions are pointedly commercial. On this dimension, there are not many pure forms: For example, Facebook may seem to host noncommercial gatherings, and yet there are ads floating about, and retail links have begun to sprout. Online brand communities for Kraft, Starbucks, or Lego, hosted by their respective companies, obviously have purchase as their ultimate goals, but their brand communities—Kraft Recipes, My Starbucks Idea, and Lugnet—are built by user groups who are more interested in simply celebrating the brand experience

Describe the pre-purchase phase in marketing:

-In the pre-purchase phase, marketers want customers to be aware of their brand and consider it for purchase. -Reach is a classic measure of the size of the audience that has been exposed to some brand information and who might therefore have some familiarity with the brand. -Reach can be achieved via traditional media and measured via online capture, e.g., as in a magazine ad that tempts the reader to learn more by going online and landing at a particular page associated with the magazine source. -Reach can also be achieved wholly online, as a function of ads on popular sites, purchased status on search engines, even via click-throughs on annoying banner ads. -If we wish to enhance awareness, we seek media that optimize reach—media that, ideally, fit our target audience, if possible. Tweets, Facebook postings, and contests to submit videos of user-proposed jingles on YouTube would all work. They're all brief and intended to be a bit more fun than informative. In contrast, lengthy expert blogs, Webinars, podcasts, and such would remain untapped; the customer isn't ready for that detail. -If there is an existing customer base (i.e., for anything other than a brand new product), marketers can reward current customers with incentives to generate word-of-mouth. WOM in customer networks is very rewarding to firms because they are usually bringing in new acquisitions. Completely new customers are the most difficult for a company to find.

Describe ROI measurements for engagement/behavior?

-It should be clearer to see how easy ROI will be to compute. -Costs of the actions depend on the marketing goals: estimates of acquisition costs, payment for placement in search engines or banner ads, sending emails from a rented address database, etc. -On the KPIs side, the effectiveness of those actions can be assessed by these frequencies, rates, and durations. Web analysts track the number of visitors coming via different routes, and they follow the customers' traversal to the particular engagement behavior of interest.

What are the KPIs for measuring behaviors/engagement on social media?

-KPIs are pretty clean when measuring behaviors. -Either they happen or they don't; it's not a gradual or subjective thing like, "How positive is a customer's attitude toward my brand?" -Thus metrics include numbers of posts regarding the brand on blogs or social networks or audience build as measured by incoming links and the speed of that growth. -Conversion rates are straightforward to compute. -They consist of frequencies of Web visitors to engage in the focal behavior (purchase, sign up for email distribution, etc.) relative to the number of visitors who come to the Website. -That is, the rates compare the desired outcomes to the number of visits or to the number of unique visitors.

In addition to passive listening, what ar the ways in which marketers can actively create interventions?

-Marketers enter online communities and ask for (paid) volunteers to be user groups to test beta products and offer feedback. Online lead users are easy to find. -Marketers conduct experiments. In the so-called A/B split tests, one group is exposed to one ad or new product description or whatever element of the marketing mix the marketer is testing. The other group is either a control group, or they see a different version of an ad, new product description, etc. The marketer then compares brand attitudes or subsequent sales in test markets to detect some lift due to the marketing intervention. -More complex experiments are also obviously possible. A company may wish to measure comparative click-through rates, member sign-up rates, or purchase valuation, as a function of whether the ad appeal is more rational or emotional, whether video or script endorsements are featured, which price is posted and whether a discount is available, etc. -GPS data function much like live cookies, storing information for your convenience upon return (and still protecting your privacy). The purpose of GPS units in phones was originally consumer service for mapping; e.g., "How do I get where I want to go from here," or "Where is my 15-year-old daughter?" GPS units are becoming geo-retailing units, and they will soon offer extremely timely (intrusive) opportunities for marketers. A motivated company will know where its customers are at all times. The company's claim will be, "When you walk near my product, I can send you a promo."

Describe looking for cliques and structural equivalence in network analysis:

-Network marketers looking for cliques are talking about exactly the same thing you did when you were in high school: Cliques are groups of people in the network. -Cliques are common in delineating brand communities, cell phone friend networks, affinity groups, and more, and they can be a nice way to find homogeneous segments of like-minded people. -Structural equivalence is the other pattern sought when analyzing networks. Two actors are said to be structurally equivalent if their links to others are the same

Describe what social media content needs to be like:

-The content needs to be honest, not defensive, and not too corporate. -There needs to be transparency for customers, employees, and stakeholders, where transparency usually means being honest, building trust, and presenting the opportunity for two-way dialog. -Social media have sufficient variety and prevalence that they can be a tremendous marketing tool—if the company can offer something that provides value to those customers and reaches them in a way that matters to them.

Describe post-purchase behaviors:

-The online environment offers more direct data about what happens post-purchase than we've had thus far IRL. If customers are satisfied, they may post positive reviews. If they're ecstatic, they may post extremely happy endorsements. -The company may wish to reward these so-called brand evangelists (or brand ambassadors or brand advocates). -If the customers are unhappy, the company can at least read the nature of the complaint and work to address it. Companies can intervene to try for service recovery, bringing the customer back on board. Even grumbling customers respond to incentives; company apologies, problem solutions, and restorative benefits can help in retention, prevent customer defections, and turn a bad situation around. -In the same way that the marketing media activity differs slightly from pre- to postpurchase, they will also vary over a product's life cycle. It is not unusual for blogs, wikis, and lead user communities to be essential during product development and when generating enthusiasm in the marketplace prior to launch. Webinars might then pick up the product introduction. Networks might capture troubleshooting issues that the company's customer support can readily handle.

Describe how to proceed with social media:

-There are many social media, and the choice of an initial medium can be difficult. Social media can be so exciting that managers believe they must engage via all possible channels. -This goal is obviously impossible and also not desirable. -As we have seen, some media fit some marketing goals better than others. In addition, some media fit the target market better than others; tweeting about twofer drinks at a popular bar works for 20-year-olds, but not for 60-year-olds. -In addition, being selective of the social medium is important because they do require maintenance and constant activity; otherwise followers lose interest. Trying to keep current on many media would keep the marketer spinning. -Although the explosion of media is great for consumers, it is very challenging for marketers. Even prior to the arrival of social media, marketing decisions about how to allocate advertising budgets were complicated, as marketers tried to find attractive viewer profiles. Resource allocation decisions have become more complex than ever.

What are the ways in which marketing researchers learn a lot from web crawling?

-Tweets, blogs, and discussion forums are monitored to make more accurate predictions about new product launches. A great deal of data results from categories with many releases, such as music, books, or movies. -Marketers use text analyses on Facebook to get a read on customer opinions about their brands. These comments may be on the brand's own Facebook page or gotten from an easy search of the brand name through other, seemingly unrelated postings. -Beyond the brand itself, content analysis has been useful in detecting developing consumer trends. Posted musings give insights into what people consider important: What are people talking about? What do people care about? -Brand managers check Websites for misinformation, to try to nip bad grassroots PR in the bud.

Describe purchase or behavioral engagement:

-Web analytics experts disdain the Contact Us buttons, instead recommending that a Web visitor fill out a form so that the company can capture at least basic information on this customer and sales opportunity. -Companies can provide exclusivity to Web visitors, e.g., preordering a product not yet available to others. Brand fans may be asked to post opinions and reviews. Sales promos may be made available from site visits or tweeted out to followers. Customer service can unfold in real time, e.g., announcing flight cancellations as a courtesy or sending a map to a customer's phone who has clicked on a product online (or scanned a bar code in a store) to find the nearest retailer (who doesn't have a stock-out). -KPIs are pretty clean when measuring behaviors. Either they happen or they don't; it's not a gradual or subjective thing like, "How positive is a customer's attitude toward my brand?" Thus metrics include numbers of posts regarding the brand on blogs or social networks or audience build as measured by incoming links and the speed of that growth. Conversion rates are straightforward to compute. They consist of frequencies of Web visitors to engage in the focal behavior (purchase, sign up for email distribution, etc.) relative to the number of visitors who come to the Website. That is, the rates compare the desired outcomes to the number of visits or to the number of unique visitors.

Describe search engine optimization:

-When customers have a preferred brand, they can go directly to purchase sites. When they don't, they'll do a search. The keywords depend on where they are along the knowledge continuum. If they have heard of the brand, they will search the brand name to learn more about it. If they are vague about the brand name they will search the product category to see the scope of competitors. And if they're even less familiar, they will search the general benefits they are seeking to see which products and specific brand names pop. -The innovation of Google's PageRank algorithm was to count the number of incoming links, weighted by the importance of the sending site.

Describe brand consideration in pre-purchase phase:

-getting customers to consider our brand, marketers want to offer more information to build customers' knowledge of the brand, as well as more persuasion to make their opinions as favorable as possible. -To do so, marketers need to use media that convey more content. -Marketers pay for search engine ad placement, post some information teasers in related brand communities, and provide podcasts containing product information and customer testimonials. -By comparison, brand consideration goals aren't achieved as readily by providing information on social networks. -People use Facebook to socialize or to be entertained, not to engage in product research. -Many measures in this category fall under search engine optimization

What is the easiest and most common way to characterize centrality?

-to count the number of connections each actor has with the others in the network -An index of degree centrality is derived for each actor. -Those with many links are said to be relatively central, and those with fewer links are more peripheral.

frequencies

are the sheer number of visits and estimates of the number of unique visitors; that is, the second number is an attempt to remove the duplications from the first number. -Even the second number has its limitations, however; e.g., imagine a couple trying to choose which car to buy next. -Both parties may visit several Websites, from their home computers and from those at work (only during lunch, of course). -That's at least four computers, even though the search is one.

durations

are usually measures of times spent per page and the overall time spent on the site.

rates

include bounce rates, i.e., the percentage of sessions for which a visitor lands on the Website and needs only one page viewing to decide, "I'm so out of here!" Then they click off the Website altogether. -Rates also include conversion rates, i.e., capturing when a visitor transitions from a looker to a doer, and we'll discuss those next.