Benchmarking Your Social Media Marketing

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Four top marketing experts from Omniture, The University of Toledo, GSE Lining Technology, and Wuesthoff Health System share their insights on:

Best Practices for Benchmarking Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

Aseem ChandraSVP, Product Marketing, Omniture

Lawrence J. BurnsVice President for External Affairs and

Interim Vice President for Equity and DiversityThe University of Toledo

Stephen T. EckhartVice President, Sales & Marketing, GSE Lining Technology, Inc.

Johnette GindlingSenior Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations

Wuesthoff Health System

Benchmarking social media is a complex and evolving process — and in many cases, a hard ROI can be difficult to quantify. Marketing leaders can measure the effectiveness of their social media market-

ing in the same way that they can create a successful social media presence: by getting involved in a meaningful way at every level of the social media hierarchy. Once company employees, leaders, and marketers are all involved in social media dialogues, the impact of social media marketing will be much clearer — and the company will be staffed by “insiders” who can monitor the company’s online reputation, work to incorporate online feedback, and engage with end users to harvest valuable feedback that can be turned into positive buzz, strong word-of-mouth, and positive ROI. ■

Action Points

I. Benchmarking Your Social Media MarketingSet your ROI parameters in advance, gather response data, and analyze it deeply.

II. The Bottom LineEngaging in social media is no longer an optional spend.

III. Must-Have Best Practices for Utilizing Social MediaEstablish guidelines for use. Monitor your presence on all platforms. Encourage employees to actively engage in social media.

IV. The Golden Rules for Maximizing Social Media Spend Understand the preferred channels of your target demographic. Stay customer-centric in your messaging. Stay nimble and mobile enough to change.

V. Essential Take-AwaysThe key to successful social media marketing is to encourage participation in meaningful two-way conversations. Determining the ROI of social media spending requires a holistic view of the role and impact of social media itself.

Contents

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.2

Aseem Chandra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.3

Lawrence J. Burns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.6

Stephen T. Eckhart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.9

Johnette Gindling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.12

Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points . . . p.15

© Books24x7, 2010 About the Authors ExecBlueprints 2

About the Authors

Steve Eckhart currently serves as vice president, sales and marketing at GSE Lining Technology, Inc. Mr. Eckhart has

16 years of successful leadership experience with the GSE sales organization.

His strengths in market knowledge, sales strategy, and team leadership are key drivers

in implementing the company’s new growth strategy.

Before joining GSE, Mr. Eckhart spent four years in a senior leadership position with a large not-for-profit organization.

Mr. Eckhart has a B.A. from Western Illinois University and is completing an M.A.

from Dallas Seminary in Educational Leadership.

Stephen T. EckhartVice President, Sales & Marketing , GSE Lining Technology, Inc.

Aseem ChandraSVP, Product Marketing , Omniture

Aseem Chandra is senior vice president of product marketing at Omniture, responsible for the go-to-market strat-

egy for online business optimization products and services, including emerging technologies such as mobile, online video, and social media. He brings over 15 years of general management, marketing, partnering, and M&A experience across a broad spectrum of enterprise and Internet software companies.

Prior to Omniture, Mr. Chandra led prod-uct strategy for the Application Integration Architecture at Oracle, responsible for

post-merger integration of acquisitions like Siebel, Agile, and PeopleSoft. During his 12-year stint at Oracle, he contributed toward the successful acquisition and merger of sev-eral software companies, industry marketing for hi-tech vertical, product management and marketing for CRM, PLM, and Procurement applications, and co-founded the Oracle Exchange applications product team, a plat-form for business-to-business marketplaces.

Prior to Oracle, Mr. Chandra held busi-ness analyst and operational roles at Eaton Corporation's Semiconductor Division, 3M

Corporation, and Behlen Manufacturing. Mr. Chandra holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, and a Master’s in Manufacturing Systems from the University of Texas at Austin.

As the senior vice president of market-ing and public relations for Wuesthoff Health System, Johnette Gindling

oversees the internal and external communi-cation for the health system and its entities. She has 18 years’ experience in health care marketing and public relations, having previously worked for Good Shepherd Health

System in Longview, Texas, and Parkview Health System in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

A native of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, Ms. Gindling graduated from Purdue University with both a B.A. and M.A. in Professional Communication. She currently serves on the Boards of the Economic Development Commission (EDC), United

Way, and the Cocoa Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Johnette GindlingSenior Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations , Wuesthoff Health System

Lawrence J. Burns is the vice president for external affairs and interim vice president for equity and diversity at

The University of Toledo.In his current interim position as president

for equity and diversity, Lawrence J. Burns works directly with the president, provost, academic, and support staff personnel to represent the university on matters of campus diversity and off-campus compliance agen-cies. Responsibilities include directing the daily activities of the diversity program and leading the development and implementation of strategic plans, policies, proposals, pro-grams, and operating procedures.

In this role, Mr. Burns also acts as a liai-son between the university and community

organizations, business leaders, and agency leaders, while creating connections and part-nerships between external clients and univer-sity resources.

Mr. Burns has served as the university’s vice president for external affairs since 2006. In this role, he has leadership, administrative, budgetary, and strategic responsibilities for meeting the university’s enrollment, market-ing, and communications initiatives. Areas within his purview include media relations, employee communications, alumni commu-nication vehicles, advertising, and other mar-keting initiatives as they pertain to university branding at all campus locations, the University Medical Center, and athletic activ-ities. In addition, he is a professor within the

Department of Communications, College of Arts & Sciences.

Previously, Mr. Burns was the vice presi-dent for institutional advancement for the Medical University of Ohio from 1990-2006, where he led a comprehensive institutional advancement program whose components included alumni relations, fund raising, and marketing and communications.

Lawrence J. BurnsVice President for External Affairs and Interim Vice President for Equity and Diversity, The University of Toledo

☛ Read Steve’s insights on Page 9

☛ Read Johnette’s insights on Page 12

☛ Read Aseem’s insights on Page 3

☛ Read Lawrence’s insights on Page 6

Aseem ChandraSVP, Product Marketing , Omniture

© Books24x7, 2010 Aseem Chandra ExecBlueprints 3

Utilizing Social Media MarketingFor our social media marketing, we have a person in our marketing organization whose full-time job is to monitor the conversations about Omniture that are occurring in the social media world. That person monitors Twitter, our Facebook user group, and activity such as any comments that are being posted about Omniture on third-party blogs. The second part of that per-son’s job is to create best practices, encourage individuals within the

company to participate in these social networks, and establish some of the guidelines around what we can or cannot communicate. Frankly, these guidelines are really, really simple: “Do not say anything in public that you might regret later on” is the essential philosophy.

The second area in which we engage actively with social media is around the support we offer in our services organization, where a lot of the conversations that are occurring in regard to Omniture are about our products, the quality of our service, and the quality of delivery. Because the majority of our customers are social-media savvy, they often turn to this channel first with their reactions to the level of performance or the level of service from our software that they are expecting. Sometimes, even before these customers reach out to us

through traditional channels, we learn over Twitter that there is a problem with a certain set of cus-tomers, perhaps because a data center is experiencing issues.

Another way we are leveraging social media is by encouraging all of our employees to actively engage in social media and promote con-versations about the company, or about whatever it is that they are working on that is important to them, and then use social media to gather feedback. We also build technology that helps measure

online marketing activity and con-versations about a particular com-pany’s brand, and we sell that technology to our customers. So we are continuously reacting based on what our customers tell us about how they are using social media in their own marketing efforts and their own branding efforts, and we find that is a really interesting point of discussion.

Return on Investment in Social MediaIt is important to talk about return on investment both in the context of social media as well as in the context of some of the other emerg-ing channels, like mobile devices or online video. We have found that the traditional ROI models are not necessarily applicable to social

media or some of these emerging channels.

When we hired our first employee to focus on monitoring social media conversations, we did not use an ROI model, other than knowing we had to actively engage and partici-pate in social media because it was no longer a choice — it is where our customers are talking about us. There is a kind of positive dialogue that is created when you have some-one on your team actively respond-ing to some of the interactions that

“Do not say anything in public that you might regret later on” is the essential social media philosophy.

Aseem Chandra

SVP, Product Marketing

Omniture

Aseem ChandraSVP, Product Marketing

Omniture

“The key to effective social media mar-keting is to understand that there are a lot of opportunities in this category; we encourage all of our customers and all of our employees to actively engage.”

• Responsible for the go-to-market strategy for online business optimiza-tion products and services

• Over 15 years of general manage-ment, marketing, partnering, and M&A experience across a broad spectrum of enterprise and Internet software companies

• Formerly led product strategy for the Application Integration Architecture at Oracle

Mr. Chandra can be e-mailed at [email protected]

Aseem ChandraSVP, Product Marketing , Omniture (continued)


occur. We create positive surprises for our customers who are discuss-ing Omniture on Twitter, a Yahoo! message board, or a blog when someone actively responds to the issues that they raise.

This creates a positive feedback loop that can be difficult to mea-sure, or at least to quantify what it is worth to us in terms of dollars and cents. But what we do know — based on anecdotal feedback, the evidence that we have seen in the marketplace, and the nature of the conversations as they shift from negative to positive when we engage — that it is in fact sufficient to justify any investment that we make in this area.

Expecting Disproportionate ReturnsWith regard to ROI, you should expect disproportionate returns on your investments. If we were to quantify some of the investments that we are making in social media, we’d find that we are getting a huge return over time for some of those investments, and that is due to the nature of social media. If a

campaign goes viral, if your mes-sage goes viral, if an online video goes viral, it creates the kind of out-comes that you could only dream of in traditional media, because

traditional media would require you to invest a lot more in terms of dollars and cents to make it hap-pen. In social media, on the other hand, if your message is compelling and if you really listen to what your community is asking for and respond to it, then they become active proponents and evangelists of your message. They share it with their friends or their colleagues, and that becomes the channel to growth and getting the word out.

We have seen a number of exam-ples, both in our own marketing efforts as well as in the experiences of our customers, where there are disproportionate outcomes for the investment made. One of the exam-ples I would like to share is an air-line that offers a very unique and differentiated experience when you

Expert Advice

The method for creating our social media content depends on the type of con-tent. For instance, with Twitter every employee is empowered to engage and we merely offer guidelines, which is a positive thing from our perspective. When it comes to blogs, again, employees have a fair amount of independence and we simply set certain guidelines that depend on their business function and role in the company, whether they are in consulting or in the support organization or in product marketing and product management. Different employees will be blogging about different aspects of a product, so one of them might be looking at content from the perspective of how to implement our products, another one might be talking about how to extend our applications, another might be talking about some of the new capabilities that we are announcing and making sure the markets are aware of the changes, and so on. Of course we also provide services where they can have their content reviewed before they push it out if they feel they have the need for it.

Essentials for Effective Use of Social Media

Constant monitoring

Employee participation

Clear best practices and

guidelines


Aseem ChandraSVP, Product Marketing , Omniture (continued)

travel with them. They were one of the first airlines to Wi-Fi enable their entire fleet, and they had no idea what to expect out of it; they even thought that there would potentially be some backlash because travelers are not used to having Wi-Fi access while they are flying. Despite those concerns, they enabled their entire fleet, and it turns out that one of the benefits they saw was that travelers started Twittering about their experience on this airline as they were travel-ing. The airline hired an intern just to monitor these conversations, and they were able to create expe-riences that they then formalized into a service recovery function in the business.

To give an example of what that means, let’s say you are traveling on this particular airline and you see that the entertainment service went down for a few hours. You Twitter about it, and by the time you land, the company has already picked up on that conversation and you will probably have a service recovery agent standing at the gate to offer you a voucher for your next travel or to apologize or to make up to the inconvenience that you experienced in some way or another. That turns the conversa-tion positive very quickly, because people are not expecting that any-body from that company was lis-tening when they put the message out. The reaction, then, becomes positive.

Benchmarking EffectivenessMost of our benchmarks for the effectiveness of our marketing cam-paigns are around reach, frequency, and lead generation — that ulti-mately translates into revenue. Spe-cifically around social media, we also look for the tone of the conversation — is it positive or neu-tral or negative toward us? We have the ability to measure that ourselves, but we certainly have some vendors and partners that work with us to help us measure it. The tone of the discussion or conversation about Omniture is probably the more important metric for us, rather than just the quantity, and particularly in social media, that is the metric that really matters. ■

Lawrence J. BurnsVice President for External Affairs and Interim Vice President for Equity and Diversity, The University of Toledo

© Books24x7, 2010 Lawrence J. Burns ExecBlueprints 6

Choosing Social MediaThe world of higher education has utilized social media over the last several years. One area of my pro-fession, the recruitment of students, has seen an explosion of usage in reaching out to prospective stu-dents whether through Facebook or Twitter in the last two or three years, and it is continuing. On the medical side of the industry, the intranet and the Web have really been the major tools people use to gain information about not only health care or illnesses but also the delivery of health care; in other words, where to go if you have cancer or a heart attack. Social media is important and now in many cases there are testimoni-als via podcasts, which have become very powerful.

To decide which particular method to use when breaking into social media you first have to be aware of what tools or methods exist, which is an ongoing chal-lenge, and then you have to analyze the effectiveness of your audience and how they interact with this tool. For example, if my audience is a 60-year-old woman, chances are that Facebook is not going to be that helpful;if it is a 17-year-old male or female, then Facebook or YouTube may be the best tool to use. Not only do you have to understand and be aware of these tools, you have to relate to your

audience with your messages and try to marry those together. Most importantly, you have to be nimble and mobile enough to change.

In the past three years, our uni-versity has utilized social media on the student recruitment side by engaging in Facebook. We have Facebook pages for prospective students to get involved with the university community. We want incoming freshmen to join the Facebook page and get acquainted with possible roommates, get involved or be aware of extra-curricular activities like intramural sports or religious groups, and try to engage people in our community before they are officially part of that community. As a result, our presence on Facebook has been very helpful. We use the university’s intranet to send out videos and tutorials about financial aid topics, which are very cumbersome for students. We try to minimize that discomfort by having videos that make things a little easier. A

number of our students and others affiliated with the University of Toledo write journals or blogs that are on YouTube or Facebook to use the elements of social media.

We have oriented our senior managers and staff to this relatively new marketing strategy mostly by showing them the medium and then relaying how it fits into what we need to do. We have a social media taskforce that meets monthly and comes up with strategies or ideas. Those that meet the test are then brought forward to senior management. We have found that you need to do more than talk

In social media, authenticity is the most important ingredient.

Lawrence J. Burns

Vice President for External Affairs and Interim Vice President

for Equity and Diversity

The University of Toledo

Expert Advice

Having an open mind has contributed to our success. We realize that looking beyond our peers or competitors is helpful. You have to be a leader in what you are trying to do and you really have to think beyond your own industry and client base or customer base about how other successful companies use these tools to enhance their products, their customer base, and their bottom line.

Lawrence J. BurnsVice President for External Affairs and

Interim Vice President for Equity and DiversityThe University of Toledo

“We work to stay current with the technology around social media.”

• Leadership, administrative, budgetary, and strategic responsibility for meet-ing university’s enrollment, marketing, and communications initiatives

• Leads all media, advertising, market-ing, and branding programs

• Professor within the Department of Communications, College of Arts & Sciences

Mr. Burns can be e-mailed at [email protected]


Lawrence J. BurnsVice President for External Affairs and Interim Vice President for Equity and Diversity, The University of Toledo (continued)

about the medium; it is necessary to show them. We actually take the time to show how a social media tool can be used because we assume that senior managers aren’t as familiar with these tools as we might be.

Our use of these social media strategies has evolved. It has changed as technology has become better and as some things work successfully and some things have not worked as well as we originally thought. We conduct as much

research as we possibly can about our programs and their effectiveness.

Best PracticesOur department’s best practices for taking advantage of the new mar-keting opportunities that social media presents include an ongoing review of other industries’ uses and trying to connect how that fits into what we do. It may entail looking at how a rock band uses a Web site with social media tools to commu-nicate with their audience and how

that same rock band marketing tool can be used to recruit students. That is an example of learning from something totally different: the tools and technology are the same, but they are used in a differ-ent fashion.

Creating Social Media ContentFirst, we need a good, broad dis-cussion about the tool and whether it could be useful for us. Then we compare that information to what our audience would want to know about us and what the content would be. For example, would 18-year-olds want to know about safety or about the fact that we have a great place to shop or have pizza or study journalism? We need to make sure that we understand what the audience wants to know and then try to determine the best way to develop that content.

Some content in social media would be better served in tradi-tional forms of marketing. On the other hand, one thing that works very well in student testimonials in social media is the homemade prod-uct, which can be very real and very credible to the prospective student. You would not necessarily put that same podcast or video on a TV commercial, because our social media research says TV commer-cials may be ignored by prospective college students. Some view com-mercials as propaganda advertis-ing. However, when they see an actual student talking about how they really love the University of Toledo because of the friends they have made, it makes more of an impression.

Social Media Decision-Making

Be nimbleenough

to change

Analyze how your audience interacts with tools

Create arelatable message

Be aware of extant tools and methods


Lawrence J. BurnsVice President for External Affairs and Interim Vice President for Equity and Diversity, The University of Toledo (continued)

Staying in Touch with Your CustomersOne way to stay in touch with cus-tomers is to make sure that social media creations are believable, real, and authentic. We recently began work on a video for patients where we interviewed physicians about what they do. It is not rehearsed and it is not edited very much. In

my opinion, the physicians are very credible so the video has an authen-tic feel.

In social media, authenticity is the most important ingredient. We have had to learn that lesson because to a traditional marketing person it may seem awkward when they are not well-produced or well-edited. One of the challenges in the

next 12 months is staying up to date with technology and having the resources to change as the public changes. Another challenge is to have a seat at the executive table so that you are empowered to make decisions, to try new things, to change, and to stay state-of-the-art as it relates to social media. ■

Stephen T. EckhartVice President, Sales & Marketing , GSE Lining Technology, Inc.

© Books24x7, 2010 Stephen T. Eckhart ExecBlueprints 9

Utilizing Social Media MarketingSocial media marketing is some-thing that our industry really has not used; one of the key reasons we are looking at this form of market-ing is our desire to differentiate who we are and what we do. For instance, we are certainly looking at things like Facebook and Twit-ter, which are big here in the U.S. We have a decent market that has really taken off in Asia, and there are options like Cyworld, which is a South Korean social network that already has 21 million members. When you consider that Facebook

has 200 million members world-wide, it is impressive that Cyworld has achieved 21 million users in a much smaller population.

We use not only social network-ing but several different methods to communicate with people, includ-ing text messages, e-newsletters, and our Web site, depending on how people opt into receiving infor-mation from us and communicat-ing with us. We will probably also set up a blogging section on our Web site, which will be an interest-ing way to receive feedback from our customers about a variety of issues.

In my mind, the question is whether these avenues help you

generate business or whether it is more about building brand aware-ness and using social networking as a sort of brand evangelism. With the younger generations coming up, social networking is probably going to be more and more impor-tant for us in terms of brand aware-ness, but regardless of the methods we decide to utilize, we have to decide what the next step is going to be. What step do we want people to take if they receive this information from us, in whatever method we choose to distribute it?

Facing ChallengesThe research that I have looked into regarding social media market-ing suggests that the challenge we face is really “What’s the return?” Other than brand awareness, what is the real benefit to social network-ing? I think the jury is still out as far as determining how effective it really is, and for the most part the biggest benefit to establishing a social network presence is really just being able to engage your cus-tomers in conversation.

There are also some challenges that we are going to face going for-ward. Even though we are in a down economy our performance this year is actually up over last

year. The question is, is that sus-tainable? What is going to happen with the global economy in the upcoming future? We are doing well in North America, but there are other challenges in emerging markets — like Eastern Europe, for example, and the Soviet bloc countries — so the question is how we position ourselves to really take advantage of those markets when the economy kicks back on. In addition, what may work as a mar-keting campaign here in the U.S. does not necessarily work in Asia or in Europe, so how do we seg-ment our marketing campaigns and

Stephen T. EckhartVice President, Sales & Marketing

GSE Lining Technology, Inc.

“It seems to me that social networking is not necessarily about building a community around your product as much as it is about the community itself.”

• 16 years of successful leadership experience with the organization

• Strengths in market knowledge, sales strategy, and team leadership

• Four years’ experience in a senior leadership position with a non-profit

Mr. Eckhart can be e-mailed at [email protected]

In my mind, the question is whether these avenues help you generate business or whether it is more about just building brand awareness and using social networking as a sort of brand evangelism.

Stephen T. Eckhart

Vice President, Sales & Marketing

GSE Lining Technology, Inc.


Stephen T. EckhartVice President, Sales & Marketing , GSE Lining Technology, Inc. (continued)

create a global brand awareness that plays in every market?

We plan to use social media mar-keting to face some of our upcom-ing challenges because if we can engage people in conversation, we have a real opportunity to under-stand our customers on a global basis. For example, things that play well in our industry in the U.S. are our strength and quality and lead-ership. In Asia those things are almost interpreted as being arro-gant, so we have to make the fine distinction between promoting our company and our brand as the leader in the industry and a strong competitor but at the same time communicating that we are a hum-ble company. In other words, the real struggle is going to be how we tweak language and make sure that things translate from market to market without spending ungodly amounts of money and without confusing our brand across differ-ent markets.

Trade Practices and Language IssuesBecause we are marketing business-to-business products, we are less concerned with questions of cul-tural norms than we would be if we were selling T-shirts or blue jeans. Instead, the thing we have to be aware of, more than anything else, is trade practices. In some market-places we are at a loss against our competition, because although America is pretty much an open market, in other countries there are a lot of protectionist attitudes.

For example, if you want to be a major player in China you have to have operations in China, and if you wanted to sell into Argentina right now you would be at a 13

percent disadvantage over some-body who is local, just because of the tariffs. People like to buy from local people, which is a trade prac-tice that you will find around the world, so that is one of the major things that we are looking at from a strategic point of view, and our company is actually wrestling with the idea of building manufacturing plants in big and emerging markets. Is there enough business that it makes sense to open up an office or a manufacturing facility in that country, just so you do not experi-ence some of those trade practices?

Along with overcoming local trade issues, we also have to be aware of language barriers. For that reason, our social media con-tent will be written in local lan-guages, as will our Web sites. Right now we are working in 16 differ-ent languages, which is a massive undertaking, but if you are going to reach people in China it has to be in Chinese, even though English has become almost a universal lan-guage. If you have traveled interna-tionally at all, you know that the locals really appreciate that you at

least make an effort to speak their language.

Gauging International ResponseWe gauge international response the same way that we do in the U.S. We are able to track where Web hits are coming from and we can track the different print media that we use around the world. The sys-tems we have in place to measure lead sources in the U.S. will be rolled out to our overseas opera-tions as well so we can track the effectiveness of any given promo-tional strategy. It is important for us to measure the ROI for each communication method to deter-mine how effective they are. Ineffective methods will be discon-tinued and we will invest in the other methods which prove to be valuable.

A lot of the social networking sites are really pretty anonymous — you can join a cause without having to give up too much information — and as a result, it is difficult to tie revenue and profit-ability to those social networking

Expert Advice

We are really trying to be customer-centric in what we do when marketing prod-ucts and services, and we will also do the same thing with different communica-tion tools. For instance, we will have an opt-in strategy that will allow people to choose text messages or other forms of receiving information on their handheld devices (e.g., BlackBerry, Treo, iPhone), and instead of e-newsletters, they can use social networking sites. We are not trying to push a one-size-fits-all strategy, but instead we are going to use a variety of strategies, and the ones that are most popular we will keep. For example, if less than one percent of our customer base opts in for text messages, then that may not be a big strategy for us. However, this tactic seemed to work pretty well for the Obama election campaign, and if I had to point to any marketing strategy or marvel in the century, I would have to point to how that campaign was managed. Their target audience was young people, and millions opted in to receive campaign news via text. You cannot ignore those numbers.


Stephen T. EckhartVice President, Sales & Marketing , GSE Lining Technology, Inc. (continued)

sites. Our main strategy with social networks will be to promote our brand. In addition, we have to look at many social networks to make sure we have good coverage across the globe. Facebook is immensely popular, but we will also use other sites like Cyworld in South Korea because it has a large number of members there. As Facebook tries to reinvent itself and stay relevant, expansion into other countries is something they will have to do, and just recently they announced that they are launching Facebook in Swahili to capture part of

the African market. Because of the anonymity of these sites, our chal-lenge will be to motivate their users to take additional action such as driving them to our Web site where we can capture more information about possible projects.

Determining EffectivenessThe question of benchmarking effectiveness in social media mar-keting efforts is a difficult one; admittedly, some of our effective-ness is going to be hard to measure. If we are able to understand

our customers in a better way — understand what their needs and desires are — that should translate into a more targeted marketing campaign and increased business.

One of the difficult things is going to be how we measure finan-cial outcomes. We will track our social networking leads the same way we do on our Web site, in print media, and with our direct market-ing efforts, but the jury is definitely still out. It may take us in the neigh-borhood of 12 to 18 months to really have a good fix on whether this is really worth the effort. ■

Johnette GindlingSenior Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations , Wuesthoff Health System

© Books24x7, 2010 Johnette Gindling ExecBlueprints 12

Our Use of Social MediaOur industry has been collecting e-mail addresses and pushing out messages for some time now. We send out e-mails to educate people on health care prevention, up-date them on new services, or invite them to special events. Now, we are adding Facebook and other trend sites to our tool box in order to build online relationships with con-sumers through the sharing of knowledge and information.

Less than one-eighth of hospitals are presently using Facebook or other types of social media. Many hospitals, as well as other busi-nesses, are using online advertising through chambers, newspapers, or magazines, but social media mar-keting is a new opportunity for many organizations — especially health care.

Because social media marketing is so new in health care, we are spending time watching the devel-opment of social media marketing strategies at other hospitals, read-ing white papers, and testing the market. By attending Webinars and reading online materials, we learned that women 50 and older are one of the fastest growing subscribers to Facebook. So, when trying to reach the target audience of women who should be getting yearly

mammograms or screened for heart disease, Facebook is a great new tool.

Developing ContentTo develop social media content, it is important to understand how the sites are being used, what type of information people want from the connection, and knowing what people are looking for when they use these sites. A perfect way to do this is to join one of the social

media sites and use it yourself. We are watching who is responding to what we put out there and what questions our audience is asking.

As a marketing team, we have made the decision to use social media. Our role is to develop the content and write the material. The IT department gives us the access we need, but the communication formation and content happens within the public relations and marketing department.

The creative process is ongoing and ever changing. Decisions must be made quickly so that the social media sites are updated routinely, at least a couple times a week in order to keep the company’s site active and interesting.

Negative InformationWe use several sites to search out what is being said about our orga-nization. The best way to deal with negative or inaccurate comments or information is to contact the source directly. Unfortunately, that process takes a lot of time and it can be dif-ficult to get a hold of the person who is responsible for putting the information out there. In addition, giving associates guidelines for social media when it involves their place of employment is crucial. We have a social media content policy for our staff regarding what they

To develop social media content, it is import-ant to understand how the sites are being used, what type of information people want from the connection, and to know what people are looking for when they use these sites.

Johnette Gindling

Senior Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations

Wuesthoff Health System

Johnette GindlingSenior Vice President, Marketing and

Public RelationsWuesthoff Health System

“Right now, there is a lot of trial and error in terms of developing informa-tion and the online connection.”

• Oversees all internal and external communication for the health system and its entities

• 18 years’ experience in health care marketing and public relations

• Previous experience at Good Shepherd Health System in Longview, Texas, and Parkview Health System in Fort Wayne, Indiana

Ms. Gindling can be e-mailed at [email protected]


Johnette GindlingSenior Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations , Wuesthoff Health System (continued)

can and can’t post about the orga-nization on their personal sites, which is very important.

As an example, many of you may have heard the story about Domino’s. One of their employees put a video on YouTube, which the employee thought was funny, but it was actually very damaging to the reputation of the company. Domino’s was able to have the video removed from the site, but the only reason they were able to have it removed was because Dom-ino’s name is trademarked and the employee(s) did not have authori-zation to use the trademarked name. It is important to note that the video wasn’t removed because it was damaging the company’s rep-utation but because of the trade-mark protection.

It is even more important today than in years past for marketing professionals to make sure their logo and name are both trade-marked, because that may be one of the only ways to get material of poor taste off the Internet. In the future, there may be regulatory involvement in the information posted on the Internet, but for right now anyone can post anything.

Social Marketing SpendingWe have spent between $25,000 and $30,000 on social networking in the past year, and that amount will increase in the next fiscal budget. I am uncertain of how our spending compares to competi-tors’ spending, and of course the size of the organization makes a difference.

In addition to social media mar-keting, businesses are spending marketing dollars on Web adver-tisements that have new tracking features. The Google ad campaigns are a good example. The Google analytics provide excellent return on investment (ROI) data. In the future I think you will see more budgeted dollars move into social media marketing and online adver-tising versus traditional advertising

means such as print, direct mail, and radio.

Gauging Customer ResponseROI and customer response has always been tricky to track, espe-cially in health care. It is important to set ROI parameters in advance of a health care campaign so every-one agrees what constitutes new revenue or volume growth. For example questions such as, “Will former patients who used other hospital services be counted in the ROI for the service you are pro-moting or only those patient who have never used the hospital prior to the marketing campaign?” need to be answered.

Expert Advice

As more content is put on the Internet, keeping it accurate is a challenge. Tracking down sources in order to correct inaccuracies is the biggest hurdle. It’s like the old saying: “If you read it in the newspaper, it’s true.” Today the assumption is, “If you read it on the Internet, it must be true.” We all know that there is inaccurate information out there, and if tracking and correcting inaccurate information is not a trend for marketing and public relations professionals, it needs to be. Inaccurate information can hurt a company’s brand through the quick dissemination over the Internet.

Determining ROI for Social Media Spend

Define key questions

Set ROI parameters

Gather relevant data

Gauge customer response

Correlate data to resulting

revenue


Johnette GindlingSenior Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations , Wuesthoff Health System (continued)

Once these parameters are set, the ROI data can be gathered. Google does offer wonderful reports that can assist in gauging customer response. For example, you can monitor how many people looked at the site and how many

actually took action. We can find out how many people filled out a request form to have a heart screen-ing or to get a tour of the women’s center.

This information can then be correlated with patients who

actually used your health care facil-ities and the amount of revenue that resulted. The greatest tool of modern technology is that we can get true numbers with less effort and data crunching. ■

© Books24x7, 2010 Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points ExecBlueprints 15

Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points Benchmarking Your Social Media MarketingFirst, set your ROI parameters in advance.

• Set goals and key questions in advance to determine your effective-ness in a social media context.

• Understand what you’re trying to accomplish and track customer response in relation to these goals.

Gather response data and analyze it deeply.

• Determine how your have fulfilled your original goals and analyze the data to determine why or why not.

• Refer to online analytics that will offer you insight into how customers are responding to your channels and messages.

Correlate this analysis with actual sales and revenue.

• Understand how your online market-ing has translated into sales and revenue — and look beyond the num-bers and consider soft benefits as well.

II. The Bottom LineEngaging in social media is no longer an optional spend.

• Companies are being talked about whether they like it or not — and they have to get involved in the discussion.

• While creating a positive feedback loop in the online world is vital, it can be hard to measure its impact using traditional ROI models.

Social media benchmarking must also focus on softer (but no less important) metrics.

• Measure the effectiveness of market-ing campaigns by monitoring reach, frequency, and lead generation — and how these ultimately translate into revenue.

• Look at the tone of the conversation specifically around social media. Is it positive, neutral, or negative?

• Recognize that an overall positive online presence is more important than the scale or scope of that pres-ence, especially in a social media context.

III. Must-Have Best Practices for Utilizing Social MediaEstablish guidelines for use.

• Create best practices and guidelines for employees around what you can and cannot communicate online.

• Ensure that employees understand the implication of what they post online and guide their online communication.

Monitor your presence on all platforms.

• Listen to what people are saying about your company, your products, and the quality of your service.

• Customers today will often go to the Internet first when they have prob-lems; actively listen in all channels to position your company for an early, proactive response to any red flags.

Encourage employees to actively engage in social media.

• Employees are a key ally in max-imizing this new mode of customer communication.

• In the same way that companies now must engage directly with the end user in a two-way conversation, the com-pany must also engage with employ-ees and make them allies in both monitoring and exploiting social media.

• Encourage all employees to actively engage in social media, promote conversations about the company, and then use social media to gather feedback.

IV. The Golden Rules for Maximizing Social Media Spend Understand the preferred channels of your target demographic.

• A one-size-fits-all mentality is deadly in a social media context — marketers must understand the preferences of their particular target group.

• This requires marketing leaders to remain familiar with current tools and methods, and understand how and why users interact with them.

Stay customer-centric in your messaging.

• Finding the proper channel isn’t enough — you must also customize the message to both the customer and the channel.

• Marketers must relate to customers with their messages, be aware of how they communicate, and marry these together.

• Use a variety of strategies, and let cus-tomer use determine which ones you should keep.

Stay nimble and mobile enough to change if and when necessary.

• Keep an open mind and don’t be wed-ded to a single online strategy.

• Customer response must dictate how you communicate: listen to their responses and be flexible enough to adapt to their demands.

V. Essential Take-AwaysThe key to successful social media market-ing is to encourage participation in meaningful two-way conversations.

• Encourage all of your customers and employees to actively engage in social media.

• Watch who is responding to your messages and be ready to adapt both the message and the medium to suit your target audience.

• Work with employees and current users to understand how the sites are being used, what type of information people want from the connection, and what people are looking for when they use these sites.

Determining the ROI of social media spending requires a holistic view of the role and impact of social media itself.

• Marketing leaders must look beyond hard sales impact and understand social media engagement as a way of building and maintaining long-term relationships.

• At the same time, use the rich data of these digital environments to drill down and determine how your online actions track with sales.

• There is still a great deal of trial-and-error in social media marketing — the most successful companies are those that learn how to listen. ■

© Books24x7, 2010 Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points ExecBlueprints 16

Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points (continued)

ExecBlueprints is a subscription-based offering from Books24x7, a SkillSoft Company. For more information on subscribing, please visit www.books24x7.com.

10 KEY QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION POINTS

1 How has your company utilized social media marketing over the past three years? How does this compare with your industry’s use? Which market segments do your social media marketing methods specifically target?

2 How has your use of social media marketing strategies evolved in the past three years? What factors led to the changes? What leadership have you provided in the development of these strategies? In what ways do you engage social media tools on the company Web site?

3 What are your department’s best practices for taking advantage of the new marketing opportunities that social media present? What factors have contributed to their success? How have these practices transformed your marketing strategies?

4 In the next 12 months, what changes do you plan in your social media marketing strategies? What results do you hope to yield? How will you measure results?

5 Which social media strategies have proved essential for staying in touch with your customers? How are these standard for your industry? How are they different? How are these strategies tested? How have new trends in social media technology affected your strategies?

6 In the next 12 months, what challenges do you expect your company will face when marketing via social media channels? How do you plan to respond to negative posts about company services and products on Web sites that your company does not control?

7 How much do you spend on social media marketing? How does this spending compare to that of your spending for other Internet marketing strategies?

8 How do you gauge overall customer response to your social media marketing strategies? How do you determine the amount of traffic driven to your Web site from public social media Web sites? How do you evaluate the level of customer interest and engagement with your social media content — both on the company Web site as well as public Web sites?

9 What is your targeted ROI for your social media marketing efforts? How can you isolate the effect of these efforts from your other Internet marketing efforts? How has this relatively new marketing technique impacted your company’s bottom line in the past three years?

10 What benchmarks do you use to determine the effectiveness of your social media marketing strategies? How do you benchmark against past performance, especially given the fact that this media is relatively new? What role does customer response play in this process?

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Documents

Benchmarking Your Social Media Marketing