Dropping the Ball: Wanna Play Foursquare?

I’ve heard the talk about it for weeks and finally had to drop the ball to say something about Foursquare. Everyone says it’s the next big thing next to Twitter and Facebook. As technology evolves, so do the applications and the attitudes around them. Am I wrong to believe that there are some people that still have yet to share every detail of their lives on Twitter and appreciate when others write something more meaningful or informative, rather than what one has for breakfast everyday? Or, maybe there are still those that wish to keep their comments private and not promote it in Twitter-ville.

I can see where Foursquare can be a great new tool for marketers and an interesting combination of mobile, social media and creating brand ambassadors to engage users. Yet, there are still some of us that prefer our anonymity and don’t want the world to know where we are all the time even if it’s towards earning discounts, or being recognized as a VIP shopper. Marketers use loyalty cards as a way to provide rewards for repeat business, but the customers are not on a public display every time one makes a purchase. I could see Foursquare being a problem for those that don’t wish to jump in and pass the ball to others promoted on a public stage.

Do we really need to know how many times Jack Smith went to Trader Joe’s twice in one week to buy some groceries, picked up a BigMac sandwich at McDonald’s Monday and on Thursday a vanilla shake, and earned himself the honorable badge of Mayor for the Sports Authority down the street. Wow, he can connect with other people using Foursquare too that have frequent those same spots 10 times this week!

Obviously, this new type of tracking device is sure to be a hit with marketers. The company will use, or sell the data, as a better means to track customers with the right campaign message and offer rewards based on one’s interests and frequency of visits.

We already know the loyalty cards measure our purchases, cookies track our performance online, and now Foursquare is going to track every step. I’m not sure everyone will embrace this concept and it will be interesting to see how it takes off. Perhaps, we have come to a crossroad where technology and social media is becoming more a part of our lifestyle and it’s accepting to most. Yet, there are still those that don’t like the intrusion of their privacy, nor those that wish to hear of the daily activities of others updated all day on their Facebook page. I can hear that popular Police song “Every step you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you,” now becoming more of a reality each day. I can also hear a lot of people saying no thanks.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see the potential of this platform, but I have a hunch that it will need some adaptations for more adopters to participate. Hmmm, I have my own idea called Hopscotch …coming soon!

Cutting Through the Virtual Noise

What’s all this noise? Check out this new site, my blog, look at this new application, that new widget! It seems the after the industry has tapped into something new, it’s already old. Is it good, bad, or maybe it’s just a part of how things are changing in this world and to how we communicate and connect with others.

Measuring Engagement & Value

Now businesses are realizing in order to influence our audience and generate revenue, the banner ads and email blasts are not where it’s at for true conversion. The web has created its’ own noise and people are looking for a new escape through social media.

As much as there are many people embracing new technology, there are still people that are not. We must work towards building the tools to redefine the new means of measurement. We must not lose site of marrying the virtual and the real world together with new analytic tools for marketers to quantify their value. A while back, I wrote a piece called, “Measure Marketing Effectiveness in the Virtual World and Finding the Value in the Real World,” providing my viewpoints and what others in the industry discuss about audience engagement and creating a new index of measurement. The entire world is going through a shake-up as to how we did business to monetize it. It’s time for us to learn, evaluate and make better decisions to revolutionize how we do business. We can’t lose site of some traditional means of marketing and how we’ve built connections in the past. I am definitely open to new trends and adopting new technology, but I am also a strong believer that face-to-face contact, influence among peers through personal conversations, using authenticity as Seth Godin promotes, and being able to trial and test products/services first-hand, can have much greater impact in the long run, rather than getting lost sometimes in all this virtual noise.

What Does All This Talk About Engagement Mean to Marketers?

How to Measure Marketing Effectiveness in the Virtual World and Finding the Value in the Real World

How does one measure the value of engagement, trust and building the right relationships with your online audience? The Internet has far greater value and measurement available. Yet, how do we define the right metrics that make sense for marketers to validate their worth and provide them with information that is useful to share with other executives.

• Is it really just about the ROI?
• Why is it that marketers want to evaluate engagement across their brands?
• What tools are available today in the marketplace to define the level of engagement?
• How can we align our strategy for the future?

Measuring engagement across one’s products and services is the magic question for many these days. As more technology is developed, it allows greater use for executives to review the data in hopes to take away insights to make improvements to their products and services. When analyzing the level of one’s engagement it’s important to marry both the quantitative and qualitative data, in order to gain a better understanding of the audience, as well as different types of usage across one’s products and services.

Every marketer defines in their own eyes a level of engagement with their customers. For some it maybe brand awareness, for others, it maybe how many people recommend their services. The Net Promoter Score  is a way to determine the value of marketing spend. How do we satisfy all the different types of goals for marketers and define what is an engagement index for measuring the effectiveness of one’s marketing efforts?

When evaluating click-thrus, it is a concern, because someone that clicks often on a particular page or decides to go deeper into the website, doesn’t necessarily really mean that individual is really engaged with your website. Perhaps this could be evidence of the individual having a difficult time to find what he/she had the intent to seek. One could go to your site with the hopes to learn more, but it’s important to realize the value of engagement should be measured on what warrants a person to come back and learn more (Retention). It’s important to identify where discovery had occurred and what keeps he/she coming back.

It’s funny how hard the online world is trying to replicate the real world and bring more people together and services through technology. People have gained skills in SEO to attract the search engines, experts have coached others how to craft email campaigns and subject lines to be viewed properly by email service providers, at the same time, we’ve tried our best to add the human element to this type of communication by personalizing the messages to drive actions. In essence people are craving engagement and connections with others and/or products as they have done so well in the real world trying to replicate a portion of that experience online. I believe that companies that can find the appropriate balance between the real world and the virtual world, that combine and understand how to best analyze the information gathered from these two worlds (the quantitative and qualitative) will best engage their audiences. It’s important for marketers to recognize those people online that take action with their product and/or service, use the data to make better analysis and reach out to those audiences through virtual means (social communities, links to blogs, partnerships, etc.), as well as traditional means of contact (interviews, phone calls, attending events etc.) to drive further engagement.

Other Thoughts on this Topic:
Ron Shevlin’s Marketing Whims
WebAnalyticsDemystified.com
Brian Haven’s Blog
Peter Kim’s Blog: A Framework For Measuring Social Media
Todd Defren’s PRSquared