Connecting with your customers – social marketing ROI

Attending the EyeForTravel conference in Berlin, most of the talk is about Web 2.0, how brands can connect with their customers, can allow customers free voice (that is: allow and respond to negative comments) and still achieve marketing goals: growing brand loyalty and business.

Reaching out to one’s customer base through an online community strategy is important, but the impact tends to be (as Sam Shank of Sidestep demonstrated) at the top end of the buying funnel. There is increasing evidence that organic search results matter, even in the context of paid search strategies. Organic search is where a lot of review-type or user-generated content ends up, and where the ROI of any brand campaign using social media will be tested. Research from Web Liquid – quoted by Geraldine Calpin of Hilton – suggests that there is a 22% uplift in click-throughs on paid search if the brand is present in organic search.

This is the proof of the pudding for our business. The value of online market research is only in what you do with the evidence you find. We were at EyeForTravel with customer Avis UK. Their We Try Harder blog was an explicit response to our research. Avis have seen double digit growth in a market that is growing at 1% per annum. We think some of that is attributable to their social media work. Studies like Web Liquid’s seem to support that. …