ORM/Social Marketing- Concluding Part

So, I started off with preparing a grid. The grid is divided into various forms/Categories ike Blogs, Sharing Platform, Answers Forums, Comunity Forums, Deals Forums etc.

And against each category I pointed out specific Objectives/.Challenges and Action points.

This grid can be tracked over a fortnight and since this would be a log term process, I guess this will give us some good information if looked in retrospect.

I had to involve my PR organisation, due to policy and compliance issues, but I am sure everyone will appreciate that Social Marketing/ORM is a more procative and involving form of marketing, and help from PR gives it the credibility and buy-in internally.

While I conclude this post now, very soon I will come back with more stuff on 2 things

1. Mobile Marketing and Scope in India

2. Social Marketing: Scope in India

till then

adios

Social Media Marketing/Online Reputation Management

I have recently initiated, among other internet marketing initiaives in my organisation, something called Social Media Marketing. One of the facets of Social Media Marketing is ORM (Online Reputation Management). Infact it will not be wrong to say that ORM is just another face of Social Media Marketing.

In India there's a fairly low level of awareness about ORM/SMM, and I thought it will be great to start a discussion around similar topics which are cutting edge and in vogue in mature economies, but gradually gaining ground in India.

So here it goes, please do contribute, it will be great to assimilate different ideas:

What is Online Reputation Management?

Online Reputation management is the process of tracking our image and perception in the market among stakeholders, recording the relevant perception pointers and opinions in the market; and creating a response strategy and action plan to either strengthen the positive pointers or weaken the negative perception.

Since a large base of customers/prospects/stakeholders access and share information via websites/blogs and search engines, Search Engine Reputation Management (or SERM) tactics are one of the most integral part of an overall ORM strategy.

3 Prime Focus Areas:

Monitor
Optimize and
Engage

Monitor

We need to monitor what: Brand, Products, Company and Key Executives.

Where: News, Blogs, Forums, Social Media and Search

Optimize

Most of the reputation management companies (and Corporates) often indulge in reactive measures. What they end up doing is chasing the dissenters and do not their brand in a position of control.

In-fact, in India a very common (and uneducated) response would be to ask one’s online agency to remove all bad content about oneself from all blogs in the world!

A few others of similar variety would attribute negative imagery on blogs to competition, and would want the agency or online marketing division to retort back with greater vengeance!

While the competition may be involved in spreading a negative word about you, it will be wise to stay stoic and not indulge in a similar reactive strategy.

What many people forget is that the consumer or the reader is much smarter than what they think of him!

What one needs to have, instead is a well thought –out long term strategy to have their digital communication optimized, so that they are present in the form of blogs, articles, or video content across identified set of sites.

Once one starts participating in selected number of strategic sites, their content will grow, communities around these content areas grow, and subsequently this content starts featuring in search results. Since more sites with positive content will feature in search engine, the old negative content sites will automatically be pushed down.

Engage

Let’s say that we encounter a negative article on a blog, here are steps in dealing with it:

Research the situation – is there merit?
If not, provide the facts and ask for corrections
If yes, then offer to discuss
Be ready to respond with your own blog
Be honest, be transparent and LISTEN
Results can be any anything from a positive turn around to a loyal brand evangelist.

A few tips to interact with negative blogs:

Investigate facts internally before taking action - could this be a competitor spreading rumor? Is there really something bad about a particular service which is being complained about?
Always take the high ground

Be honest!

Explain what you have done to rectify any issue

Offer to resolve any complaints personally - have a senior-level staff member make the offer - try to continue discussion offline and utilize your allies.

Don’t create new “personas” to support your position in blogs, forums and message boards as you’ll likely be caught! As I said the reader/consumer is very smart!

Look froward to the 2nd and concluding part next week!

Part-II, Marketing in Digital Age

Continuing from where we left...

3. To be innovative, in today’s parlance means being simple and straight.

Today’s consumers are younger but much smarter, and they do not want sugar coated message, if one can deliver it straight, one will be able to involve them. If you observe Google: it is not the most aesthetically designed site in the world, it does not have any content of it’s own, it does not have any flashy banner ads, or videos on the homepage. You can rarely see any ads/kiosks/hoardings promoting Google products but still, perhaps it is the largest traffic attracter in the internet space! Why?

Simple yet aesthetic design, fast & responsive service and relevant results. So keeping Google’s case in context, what would have Yahoo done in 1998. They would have tried to make better email systems, and better websites which would be feature rich and attractive.But Google saw two trends very clearly and early:

1. There was a catalytic growth in content on the net and this meant that in future people will need to try harder to get a specific information, since the information would then be spread across millions of ever-expanding worldwide network of websites. Hence a need for a good search mechanism.

2. With the design revolution, most sites will sport flash, video and multimedia content, that will make sites heavier and sites will take more time to load, hence a need for a site/search engine that’s light and loads fast.

(This means there still is an unfilled gap of a search engine that can index and search images, flash and other types of information that are still not indexed properly by Google)

That’s what Google did. Another important observation, which you may appreciate, : The major search sites of that era, ‘Excite', 'Alta Vista' and 'Lycos', also missed this point. They tried to expand into becoming horizontal portals (started to present news, and other information on the search site), and look where they are now!

Again, this also links back to observing the trends of peripheral products/categories (not necessarily customer trend only) and carve an opportunity out of it.

4. Marketing through Blogs:

I am sure you know, people across the world tuned themselves to the blogs, when USA invaded Iraq, to know the latest and real story. It was not the CNN or BBC, which held the attention of millions of concerned viewers across the world, but it were the blogs written by journalists who were on- ground during that time. Blogs are considered to be an honest and personal medium of expression, hence the trust and involvement is more.

Blogs are going to change the face of communication on earth! It’s upto us as to when and how do we want to leverage this. GM, Disney, Sony and various other organisations are leveraging Blogs to their advantage. In India, we have not seen much on this front, but this is what for instance, Maruti SX4 could have done:

1. Launch an extensive online campaign calling bloggers to empanel for test driving SX4.(Promote this offline, to build aspiration and involvement)
2. Select 50 bloggers across different platforms, and ask them to keep an SX4 for 1 week, and write about the experiences.
3. Capture videos, and photographs of bloggers using SX4 and spread them in different media as PR and ads as also post them on corporate site, youtube and community sites.
4. The bloggers eventually post their experience.
5. Integrate those blogs and promote them through online and offline mechanism and ask people to comment, ask questions and register for test drive.This could have given low cost high impact advantage to SX4.

Marketing through Blogs is an extremely interesting topic, and if an opportunity comes I shall be glad to share more on this in future.

I am sure you all have tried similar innovations in various aspects of your corporate life.
It will be great to hear and learn from your experience. Please do convey how you liked this article and share your thoughts.

I conclude by quoting Albert Einstein:
Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.

Marketing Innovation in the Digital Age

Marketing is a process to come closer to consumer. How innovatively can one execute this process of coming closer to a consumer, would determine how innovative one is as a marketer.


This is how I decipher marketing!

1. Being innovative in marketing starts with listening to consumers (Not exactly)!
Don’t get me wrong, but in today’s world it’s imperative to observe a customer through all the means possible and not just do a feedback research that’s going to give predicted results.
Because it’s not always the consumer who knows the most about his own needs, or for that matter a product that he consumes!

To put things in context, imagine, how successfully Intel has executed it’s marketing program. It has always positioned it’s products at the top end of performance, and coupled with that, consistently launched new products with higher benchmarks.

Frankly, there is no specific need for me to buy a laptop with dual-core processor and hyperthreading (I perhaps don’t even know what difference can it bring to my life), but still I will think twice before buying an AMD equipped laptop or a cheaper celeron.

That’s because Intel has not necessarily just listened to customers, it has observed the buying behavior (which is simplistically, based on a feeling of consumer insecurity, that arises from less knowledge about technology and a tendency to buy products that comply with latest standards, so that they do not face any support problems later), and based on that configured it’s entire marketing strategy.

Intel is a leader, and as a leader it sets benchmarks…and changes them very frequently…it doesn’t wait for the customers or the competition to action or initiate any change/deviation.
Hence, OBSERVING a customer (see, who are the peripheral users, what are the peripheral needs of existing users, what are the peripheral products, buying behavior and see what best practices can we superimpose in our marketing) is more important than just listening to him.

Another example that comes to my mind is of one of the most impactful registration drive campaigns from Timejobs.com.

Timesjobs.com, observed two pain points,
1. Weak bandwidth/communication links: So when a person would start to register on Naukri or mosnter, many times, the connection breaks and the person has to re-fill the entire form.
2. The forms were so lengthy that, people would fill up half of it and then abandon it, to come back again and fill up at leisure.

(There was no specific complain from the customer, because for the customer Naukri and Monster were two great things that have happened to him, and if it means a little bit more effort to fill-in the form, not a problem)

Timejobs created ads that looked like registration forms and it did 2 things for Timesjobs:
1. The person can fill the form from anywhere (clicking a link from within google, or filling up a form within rediff.com)
2. It was quick and easy. (just 3 steps). A person needed to fill in just about 3 fields to get registered.

This helped in driving traffic, so much so that today, Timesjobs claims to be the fastest growing job portal in India.

Again, Timesjobs may not be a better product, but all it did was observe a latent need/consumer behavior and that made a difference.

2. Segmentise Consumers and make segment specific Product/marketing strategies

I have pondered and discussed this earlier in this blog.
For e.g.: Imagine if a company like HP ties up with a newspaper like Times of India (and their special School initiative), and say 100 Schools across India, and encourage children to come out with a fortnightly school newspaper.

The newspaper can be designed on HP-PCs using a few HP softwares, scanners and printers (they may collaborate with adobe for advanced users), and can be distributed by Times of India.
Imagine the number of young minds you can influence. These youngsters are not just the influencers today, but will be the actual buyers and users tomorrow.

Similarly this can be done for doctors, architects and other segments. All we need to do is to create a difference in terms of reaching closer to our prospects and creating an impact.
It’s a great opportunity, especially for players in the field of online gaming, blogging and social networking to tap into specific segments and leverage.


To be concluded... Please look forward to the concluding part of this article, this weekend. We shall discuss Blog Marketing and other innovative and simple ways to market your product)

(This article was first published on http://www.desicreative.com)

8 Interesting Ways to Reduce Online-fraud!

Before we proceed, it’s very important to look at your transaction data and analyse, which segments need what level of fraud control. For e.g. in some cases high value items attract the most fraud, however in many cases, in 2007, the frauds are happening in low denomination items!.

Hence depending upon, factors, (countries, domains, item value etc.), one needs to decide the investment and resources needed for fraud control:

So, here you go :

1. Extra verification: There is an innovative verification technique, I saw at the telesign website (www.telesign.com)

When the person clicks on submit button after filing up the signup for on your site, within a few seconds he receives a call on the number he has provided in the form...and there is an automated voice with a 4 digit pin no.

The customer needs to put that no. in the verification box on your website

We are assuming that a fraudster would not give his real no. in which case he will not be able to verify.

This entire process would take less than 30 seconds.

2. Motivate people for direct debit: give them incentive to use direct debit facility. One would need to tie up with various banks to offer this facility. Chances of fraud are less in this case.

3. Tie up with a credit card company to launch a corporate card...say… Xyz- BankAm credit cards.

Promote these cards on your website and offer incentives. The credit card company will verify the database and share the same with us. We can also use one extra step of verification (like sending a PIN): THIS pin will be delivered at the physical address of the person who has signed up for the card and is sent by the bank. Once received, the person needs to use that pin, while making any payments on your site.

Another benefit of this idea:

A cash back scheme/ frequent user scheme can be easily deployed for the card holders and will go a long way in promoting customer loyalty.

4. We can ask people to use only corporate/paid email ids. No free email ids are allowed.

(Most of the fraud cases are through free email ids): again this would hold true for the denomination where we see most of the fraud happening (say USD 50 and above).

I feel that in the next 6 months, e-commerce sites are going to be very strict on this, though this may seem a put-off initially, this scheme has a potential to go a long way!

5. Proactively sending emails to people after signups and asking them
to call you directly (and not their ban) if they think there is an error; goes a long way in reducing chargeback.

6. Industry negative database: Collaborate with other players in the industry and make an industry negative list. Or hire the services of a professional firm that can provide with updated negative list.

7. Need of a CSO/online security team for policy, application -implementation and control. A CSO brings in a professional approach to the challenges alongwith a thought-process guided policy, action plan and resources.

8. Order Velocity: Check the order velocity pattern across you site or various merchant sites . Deploy software that can check this, or form an industry consortium, and check this in real time.

Reasons for Chargebacks and Their Remedies

Chargebacks can fall into any of five different reason categories:

1. Processing Errors
2. Customer Dispute
3. Post-Transaction (or non-fulfilment of copy requests)
4. Potential Fraud
5. Authorization-Related
In a CNP scenario (Card not Present), following reasons are most common: Processing Errors, Customer Dispute, and Potential Fraud.

Remedies

By all means online merchants are at a disadvantage when it comes to chargebacks. With no credit card to swipe or receipt to sign, one needs to be innovative to really verify a sale.

For ecommerce players like online gaming or online calling services , the situation is even worse, because the delivery of service is immediate and online.
There are new tools available, and more on the way, that aim to reduce online fraud and therefore reduce opportunities for chargebacks. Two similar technologies, Verified by Visa and SecureCode, provided by Visa and MasterCard respectively, will help to verify a customer's identity at the time of purchase.

Unfortunately, I am not sure what’s the base that these companies have, and then there is always a threat of loosing a customer, since it’s one extra step in the entire ecommerce process and not all customers would remember the secureCode/Verified by Visa code at all times.
So this will have a limited impact for now.

But while you use and adopt the Fraud Management technology, nothing beats a Customer Centric Environment.

I would advise the following :

Analyse the reasons why one has a high incidence of chargebacks.

1. If it is fraud:
a. then one needs to have fraud management system in place. (Connect with Visa, PayPal,
CCavenue or specific security/fraud management agencies and configure policies and
systems around address verification, negative database, verify IP, order velocity, etc.)

b. Share your negative database with your competition and make a Global Industry
Negative Database : Block these cards across the Industry.

2. if it is due to customer dissatisfaction: we need to work towards
a. Better and more frequent communication with customers

b. Put in place a system, that records step by step affirmatives and sign-ups by the
customer. This is proactively recording customer satisfaction and his receipt of service, so
that even in case of dispute the incidence is minimum, and to start with it will help you
have a satisfied customer with less chances of dispute.

c. Have a visible customer contact available at your site and all communications with
customer (including billing).

d. Run a customer loyalty program

At the end of it, as someone said, one needs to progress and become smarter along the way. There is no quick-fix and there is no permanent solution.


Sources http://www.cybersource.com, http://www.visa.com, http://www.sitepoint.com

Charge-Backs: A Deadly threat for E-Commerce Merchants

Worlwide there are about 1.2m credit cards which are either stolen or are at risk. You can imagine if each of these cards do a transaction worth just USD1000, there is a potential loss of more than USD1B to the ecommerce industry worldwide.
According to cybersource (http://www.cybersource.com) approximately 1% of accepted orders turn out to be fraud, and in 2005 we lost USD2.5B due to these.
That’s not all, merchants reject 4% of incoming orders due to suspicion of fraud! (You can imagine the losses here!)
In India, as we embark upon the e-commerce revolution, we need to learn and prepare ourselves from the deadly threat of fraud and more specifically chargeback.
What Exactly is a Chargeback?
A chargeback occurs when a customer contacts a credit card-issuing bank to initiate a refund for a purchase they made on their credit card.
For merchants chargebacks can be costly , because not only the dollar amount of sale is lost, but also there is an added processing cost and time.
The Chargeback Process
Let's take a look at the chargeback process used by Visa and MasterCard. The process is as follows:
1. The customer disputes a transaction by contacting their card-issuing bank
2. The card-issuing bank researches to determine whether the reasoning for the chargeback is valid.
3. A provisional credit is provided to the customer. The card-issuing bank initiates a chargeback process and obtains credit from the merchant's processing bank.
4. The merchant's processing bank researches the validity of that chargeback.
5. The chargeback amount is removed from the merchant's account and the merchant's processing bank provides written notification to the merchant.
6. Did a processing error occur? If so, the sale is re-presented to the card-issuing bank for corrections.
7. The merchant provides documentation to remedy the chargeback. If the provided documentation is found to be satisfactory, the chargeback is declined and the customer is once again charged for the sale. If the documentation is found to be unsatisfactory, the chargeback is successful and the process ends.

Look forward to my next posting on the reasons and remedies for avoiding Charge-backs.

Late posting, but interesting. I was in news sometime back, when I tried to promote this blog through adwords and other search vehicles.

check it out !!


http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/12/googler-with-some-big-adwords.html