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Have you marked your calendar for tomorrow’s #socbizchat with Kevin Randall, Cheryl Burgess and Mark Burgess? Get ready, because we’ll be discussing lessons from Cheryl and Mark’s book, The Social Employee. Want a sneak peek? Here are three things you’ll learn more about in the chat tomorrow:
How great companies build great social cultures
The majority of The Social Employee is devoted to stories of how top brands including IBM, Cisco, Southwest Airlines and AT&T built standout social cultures. In our Twitter chat, you’ll learn more about how great companies use social channels to increase employee engagement and strengthen their businesses. If you’ve already read The Social Employee, have your questions ready.
The importance of internal social media strategy
Many people continue to think of social media as only an outward-facing tool. The Social Employee reveals it to be so much more. Whether your business has already embraced internal social media, is cautiously considering it or is afraid to get involved, tomorrow’s Twitter chat is a great chance to learn more. Join us to hear about brand successes and ask questions about how they got there.
How to recalculate a social media policy for maximum effect
In our chat, you’ll learn that top brands constantly measure the effectiveness of their social strategies and make changes when necessary. Get insights into how to measure the effectiveness of your policy, and how to recalibrate when necessary for better results. If you have a story to share about an effective social media strategy pivot, come prepared to share.
Remember to join us tomorrow at 10 am PT/12 pm CST to take part, using the hashtag #socbizchat.
Photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives via Flickr Creative Commons
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In The Social Employee, for which our own Kevin Randall wrote the afterward, Cheryl and Mark Burgess write about employee voice as brand identity.
Some companies may be nervous about empowering employees to become the social voice of their brands. In the past, it was relatively easy for brands to control their communications because channels for public interaction were limited. Brands could therefore carefully curate their image, and make sure that everything that reached the public was polished and professional.
However, the digital age has changed everything. Brands cannot afford to keep this distance from consumers anymore. Today, people expect a human touch as never before.
As we wrote about in December, raw content is reshaping the world of marketing. Consumers who are accustomed to content created by passionate amateurs are looking for authenticity in their brand interactions. Polish still counts, but polished materials without a sense of authenticity and human touch can fare poorly in the Internet’s bottomless pool of content.
Employee voice is brand identity
In this environment, employee voice becomes critical to brand communications. Employees’ authentic voices can be used to strengthen a brand.
As explained in The Social Employee:
“Today’s consumers expect online engagement with brands, and they expect to be engaged in an authentic manner. Consumers don’t want to speak to a brand; they want to speak to real people. … A brand’s reputation depends tremendously on how well its social employee representatives communicate with the outside world.”
Brands ignore this reality at their own risk. The Burgesses write, “The truly engaged social employee does not play at engagement in order to appease the public.” In fact, as they explain, this mindset is toxic to brands. Truly social brands work to communicate earnestly with customers, going beyond simple sales techniques to foster meaningful relationships. This can play an important role in building brands with purpose.
Want to learn more about employee voice and social authenticity? Join Cheryl and Mark Burgess and Kevin Randall in this week’s #socbizchat, Feb 12 at 12 PM CST.
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As we discussed last week, businesses benefit from having a clear purpose and sense of responsibility to the world around them. Today, we will dive deeper into how purpose helps business by looking at the original arguments for purpose in business and how they have evolved.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, has proposed that a new type of company is emerging in the 21st century that is transforming how business is conducted. Businesses that are driven by values and rely on them when making strategic decisions are coming to the forefront. As a result of this value-driven strategy, employees are more engaged, more productive and more innovative. Moreover, companies gain a competitive advantage as they are able to attract customers who share their values and build their brand credibility.
Kanter also posits that “more important than philanthropy is operating a business that brings value to the world.” She quotes Daniel Vasella, CEO of the company Novartis, who says that businesses can best serve society by continuously bringing innovative and profitable products to market, instead of making philanthropic donations that no other entities can make.
We’ve taken a look at how scholars and case studies view the relationship between corporate purpose and profits and provide insight into how purpose can drive profit. Like Kevin says in his whitepaper, “Companies should embrace a higher purpose by serving and creating distinct value for key constituents. Only when they do this authentically, operationally and comprehensively, will their long-term financial objectives be realized.”
A colleague of Kanter’s, Michael Porter, expanded this argument in his paper “Creating Shared Value.” In this paper, he argues that the shift in business thinking towards value-based strategy creates new opportunities for competitive advantage, profitability, and social impact, all in line with what Kanter was saying. However, he does further suggest that all corporations and capitalism itself must be reorganized to serve rather than compete against societal impacts, like reducing obesity or lowering carbon emissions, and argues that profits should not be the primary corporate goal, but rather the byproduct of an effective implementation of a purpose-based system.
Since then, scholars and experts have continued to discuss this issue. Should companies focus on direct social impact, or is the best way for a business to impact the world around them to attain market and financial success first? Is philanthropy a successful method of giving back to the community, or have these efforts been ultimately harmful to the economic and social interests of the company?
Reviewing the evolution of business purpose gives us clues into its future. At the moment, the evolution of business purpose is full of question. It will take many years of research and tracking to see how current practices affect the greater good, and what kind of effects they have. Let us know: what are your predictions for the future of business purpose?
Photo credit: photogeek133 via Flickr Creative Commons
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In our upcoming whitepaper, “A Higher Purpose Means Higher Profits,” Vice President of Strategy & Marketing Kevin Randall wrote, “Most companies have visions, missions and values; but having a purpose goes deeper: it establishes a reason for being (beyond economic) and defines individual employee and collective meaning and direction.”
Customers, Organizations and the Rest of the World
An organization’s purpose encompasses its commitments to customers, the organization and the rest of the world. At Movéo, we think of these three groups as “COR” stakeholders. Purpose is the reason for an organization’s existence, materially, economically and emotionally.
Who does your organization serve? How do you serve them? If it’s difficult for you to answer these questions, it may be time for your leadership team to sit down and reconsider your organization’s purpose, and how you intend to further it.
Why Businesses Benefit
Businesses benefit in measurable ways from making purpose central to their strategies. Purpose drives growth, in more ways than one.
Companies that put purpose first have seen enormous growth in the past 20 years. As Kevin writes in the whitepaper, “Babson professor and Whole Foods advisor, Raj Sisodia, studied 28 companies from 1996-2011 and concluded: purpose-driven enterprises (“firms of endearment”) grew by 1647 percent compared to the S&P 500 average of 157 percent.”
This growth was driven in part by people’s hunger to feel that they are contributing to something meaningful. Customers want to patronize organizations that share their values. Employees want to work where they can contribute to meaningful outcomes. These trends are especially marked among millennials. As the generation becomes an ever-larger share of the workforce and controls more purchasing power, no business should ignore these values.
Purpose-driven business can both increase profits and, in some ways cut costs. For example, in serving employees (the heart of the “O” in our COR stakeholders), an organization may choose to invest in employee wellness programs or add office amenities. Over the long term, these initial costs will pay off through lower employee turnover, a more engaged workforce and perhaps even fewer healthcare costs down the line.
How does your organization embody its purpose? What changes can you make to rededicate your business to its COR stakeholders? This month, we’ll explore these questions and more on the Movéo blog.
Photo: photogeek133 via Flickr Creative Commons
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This month on the blog, we’ve given you plenty of information on how marketers are making a difference that extends beyond their fields and impacts the greater good. But today, let’s take a step back and focus on how one company or one person can choose to use marketing to promote the greater good.
Business growth and economic growth go hand-in-hand
As we talked about in our post on January 5, the connection between marketing, business growth, and economic growth is often a straight line: marketers drive customers to a business, which in turn drives revenue, and that creates a strong sector, and eventually a strong economy.
In order to make sure that your company is positioned for success, it’s imperative to keep this business growth top-of-mind. The best way to do this is to ensure open communication with the rest of the company in order to make sure that all of your goals and objectives are in line, and then develop the strategy and tactics to set your marketing up for success.
Know the actors you impact
As we’ve talked about in previous blogs, the impact of your marketing goes far beyond your immediate targets. Think about those secondary and even tertiary actors who are impacted by your marketing, and keep their needs in mind when you develop a plan. Remember, the employees of your partner businesses, the business itself, and the customers they reach are all impacted by what you do, so take a moment to think about their objectives and how you can best help them.
Data and analytics is key to success
But how do you develop strategy and tactics that set you up for success? Movéo is built upon the idea of, and has found success in, establishing measurable KPIs, and using data to monitor the performance of any marketing effort.
After communicating with the rest of the company on their goals and objectives, focus on setting up analytics that are related to company-wide goals, and then break those down into marketing objectives. This way, the data that you collect will let you know how you are doing as a department, but also tie back to the overarching business strategy. This analytical approach is what will drive business growth.
Making a difference through marketing is a tough task that requires a steadfast focus on promoting the greater good. However, it’s absolutely worth the effort.
Let us know: what steps are you taking to impact your world?
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How can a business demonstrate their commitment to making a difference?
These three B2B businesses have made a public commitment to a cause. Each works to show that commitment in a meaningful way, and marketers can learn lessons from each of them.
Atlassian Partners With Room to Read
According to TechCrunch, Atlassian, an enterprise software company, was founded with the intent that one percent of of its profits, equity and employee time would go to charity. Over the past five years, much of Atlassian’s social good focus has gone to Room to Read, an organization dedicated to providing education and raising literacy rates in poor countries.
In a recent blog post, Atlassian calls their approach “causium marketing.” “Causium” is a combination of “freemium” and “cause.” Their approach involves selling inexpensive versions of Atlassian’s starter software to startups and small businesses.
Lesson: By creating a promotion for small teams that led to a charitable donation, Atlassian expanded their user base while supporting world literacy. The work is good for the company, because as startups using Starter Licenses grow, they will likely purchase full-scale Atlassian software. And the money raised has been far from trivial: as of February 2014, Atlassian had contributed $3 million to Room to Read.
Atlassian made cause marketing integral to their mission and the delivery of their product. Their partnership with Room to Read is not limited to a short-term campaign — it has grown over the past five years. Consider how your company can integrate support for a cause into your mission in a similar way. You’ll be doing good, and people will come to associate your work with your cause.
Tork donates to No Kid Hungry
Tork, a business offering a range of hygiene products and services to the food service and healthcare industries, took a similar approach. According to Joe Waters of Selfish Giving, Tork discounted one of its napkin dispensers for four months, slashing the price from $8 to $2. For each dispenser purchased, $1 went to the charity No Kid Hungry. Sales of the dispenser doubled and the money raised for No Kid Hungry exceeded expectation.
Lesson: Tork’s fundraiser, promoted through a trade press release, e-blast and sales conversations, was a success. For companies taking their first steps into cause marketing, Tork’s example is a good one. The company also promotes social good in other ways, including sustainability initiatives, and continues to promote No Kid Hungry on their site.
Mischler Financial Group supports disabled veterans
Since 1994, Mischler Financial Group has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for service disabled veterans, donating to a variety of programs including the Wounded Warrior Project.
This support has been given in a variety of ways, from the donations of a portion of November profits to career mentorship of disabled veterans. Mischler has also advised other companies on how they can support veterans.
Lesson: Mischler Financial Group’s CEO is himself a service disabled veteran, leading to his focus on helping others in the same position. If you are looking for a cause for your business to support, talk to your employees. It’s likely that some of them will already have personal connections to organizations that could use your company’s assistance.
If you choose to support a variety of groups serving a similar cause, as Mischler Financial Group does, be sure to make the overarching cause commitment clear to your clients and potential clients.
Photo credit: photogeek13 via Flickr Creative Commons
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This month, we’ve been writing about the impact of strong marketing campaigns. But in addition to the intended impact, B2B marketing campaigns can have unpredictable repercussions.
Sometimes, these unintended consequences hit a business right where it matters most: in sales. In a blog post called “Are Your Go-To-Market Strategies Creating Negative Buyer Perceptions,” buyer insight strategist Tony Zambito tells the story of a high-tech company that began a new content marketing program with terrible results. In an effort to promote the company’s executives as thought leaders, the business stopped emphasizing the research and development for which they were known. Clients began to leave the business for competitors.
What can marketers learn from this example? How could the tech firm have changed the negative sales repercussions of its marketing?
Always listen to your audience
If the company in question had paid more attention to what their clients valued in a tech supplier in the first place, they would have created a content marketing strategy that emphasized what the client wanted. In this example, clients placed a higher value on research and development than on thought leadership. By taking away what their clients valued, this company showed that they were out of touch with what their clients wanted as well as their own strengths. That’s why Movéo often recommends customer research that will identify these valued attributes, so that we are able to craft messages and campaigns that drive business growth.
Use marketing to add value, not remove it
Even as the tech company dedicated more funds than ever before to research and development, their marketing ignored it. The business would have done better to build its thought leadership around the research and development emphasis. Adding the thought leadership component need not have eliminated messaging about research into new products or value for money.
Test your marketing
Before embarking on a major change in strategy or launching an expensive new campaign, get feedback. The architects of even the best campaigns can be too close to their own work to catch its flaws. To build the strong marketing campaigns that perform as intended, consider testing your messaging or creative to see which send the message you intended and which resonate the most with your specific audience.
As we’ve seen throughout the month, marketing can have surprising consequences that can be positive, negative or neutral in nature. Let us know: what’s one unintended consequence you’ve seen in your business?
Photo credit: PICNIC Network via Flickr Creative Commons
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As we talked about last week, the new marketing value chain provides B2B and healthcare companies with more opportunities than ever to affect the world around them. Today, we’re going to go into depth about how a data-centered approach bests the old “rules and tools” value chain not just in terms of business effectivity, but also in promoting the greater good.
Creativity
“Rules and tools” is an inherently limited philosophy to work by. How would you feel if someone told you that because written content has been so successful for so long, you should just stick to it and disregard any new forms of content creation?
The new marketing value chain allows marketing to be more flexible and more creative so that it reaches many different people on many different platforms. These messages need to be molded to fit the different audiences on these platforms, allowing more room for creativity in your marketing. As we talked about in our last post, more and more consumers are valuing a business’s commitment to social responsibility when they make their buying decision, so there’s more chance to creatively add impact into your messaging.
Targeting
This one is easy: we’ve talked many times on the blog about how paying attention to data allows you to more efficiently and accurately target your messaging to different audiences. This efficiency directly relates to how your business can promote social sustainability. You’re able to show through your marketing practices your commitment to sustainable business, cutting out any excess or unnecessary steps and ensuring that business is moving as effectively as possible. If that isn’t a sustainable business practice, what is?
Moreover, you can more easily build relationships with other businesses that value social sustainability through targeting. Building up a network of like-minded potential clients not only makes business sense, but allows you to establish yourself as a leader in the social sustainability sphere.
Accountability
Data holds you accountable to your actions. It provides evidence of your business operations–and this is incredibly valuable when you want to show how you behave in a socially sustainable way. If you have the data to back up your expenses and investments to show that you are behaving in a way that benefits the greater good, you show that your business is a model for corporate responsibility.
Let us know: how does the evolving marketing value chain help your business operate with more sustainability and social consciousness?
Photo credit: Denzel via Pixabay
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What do data and analytics have to do with making a difference?
As Movéo addressed in our white paper, The New Marketing Value Chain, data insights drive modern marketing. These insights must then be applied to marketing campaigns through carefully-considered strategy and creative work.
The New Marketing Value Chain allows marketers to make a significant positive impact on businesses and communities. With an increasing ability to target and personalize their operations, B2B and healthcare marketers can be more efficient and create greater yields for lower costs than ever before.
Similarly, the increased reach and efficiency offered by the New Marketing Value Chain allows companies to expand the impact of their sustainability and social responsibility programs. This creates a larger net positive impact that the same changes applied on a smaller scale.
In order to harness the power of the New Marketing Value Chain in your work, use data insights to tailor your outreach to business leads. Observe and adapt based on how your target audiences use your website and interact with your business through email outreach, social platforms and other channels.
In what other ways have you used data and analytics to expand your impact?
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Making a difference sounds good and feels good, but in the end, aren’t marketers mainly responsible for generating more sales? What’s in it for business?
Ultimately, it is beneficial for business to care about corporate social responsibility and promote the greater good for several reasons.
From a marketing perspective, doing good raises a brand’s profile and allows for more sustainable growth. Organizations with robust corporate social responsibility programs often receive positive press and can showcase their efforts via a variety of online and offline marketing channels. Many businesses are now seeking to improve the environmental and social impacts of their supply chains, and marketing that conveys these values with the data to support them is likely to resonate with consumers who are becoming increasingly cause-conscious.
In terms of future growth, depleting the resources that a company and its customers rely on today can cause high costs and other business and environmental difficulties down the road. A socially and environmentally responsible organization can grow sustainably, knowing that it is a good environmental and social steward.
Businesses built on social responsibility are also better able to attract, retain and engage top employees. In a Net Impact survey, both current workers and students entering the workforce ranked “a job where I can make an impact” as far more important than either wealth or a prestigious career. Forty-five percent said they would take a 15 percent pay cut “for a job that makes a social or environmental impact,” and 58 percent would take the same pay cut “to work for an organization with values like my own.”
While environmentally-friendly changes can incur upfront costs, they can also save money in the long run through decreased energy use, lower packaging costs and improved supply chains. Unilever has set and begun the implementation of rigorous waste-reduction goals, and provides a B2C example of a major business that has taken sustainable action and increased growth and profits. Similar benefits are in reach for B2B and healthcare companies that take action now.
With all of these positive business outcomes, no marketer should have to ask ask, “Why should we care about making a difference?” Instead, the question should be, “Why have we waited so long to take action?”
