According
to a report by the IBM Center for Applied Insights, Marketing
Science: From descriptive to prescriptive, marketers use systematic
observation, testing and measurement to study broad behavioral patterns to drill
down from the aggregate to the individual, and produce new insights that can
improve business outcomes. Marketers want to paint a predictive picture of each
customer as an individual – on a massive scale. To do this, they will have to
gather the right data about each customer by connecting social media data,
transaction data and other information for this vivid picture of how to
best-serve each customer.
Better Digital
Marketing
Traditional mass media
advertisement campaigns cost significant time and money. On the other hand,
digital marketing is more cost effective and can be rolled out easily, but
targeting is a challenge.
Vibes helps find that
right audience by interconnecting the social networking information of those
who use and talk about a brand.
|
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| Natwar Modani |
Natwar
Modani, a scientist at IBM Research – India has been studying social networks
and social media for the last few years to put an end to this “new marketing mystery,”
as he calls it. The result of his work is a tool called Vibes that empowers
Chief Marketing Officers with insights derived from analyzing social
interaction patterns.
Vibes
helping business leaders
Vibes, an
enterprise software solution still in pilot phase, helps a CMO narrow down
business targets to communities that care about and participate in their industry.
The individual targets in these communities are then found by analyzing their
interaction on social networks, and then cross-referenced with their purchase
history with the company, or information about their interests based on other
social networking activity. For example, a retailer could find out past
purchases of its Facebook fans to better-determine what special offers to make
to them.
These
online communities (such as Facebook groups) have the unique characteristic in that
they have well-connected members with similar tastes. Such communities provide
an alternative to the traditional micro-segments of age, gender, location or
other profile attributes, (or even purchase history based micro-segments), with
the added power of strong social interaction.
Vibes has the
ability to optimize target selection within a community for marketing
campaigns. It is important to strike the right balance in choosing influential
individuals but still ensuring that the collective reach of the chosen
community members is maximized. This way, the “word of mouth” effect can spread
the adoption of the promoted product across the entire community and beyond.
Vibes also
helps identify the right set of candidates to promote a product to increase its
penetration. For example, consider a product that is already in the market and
which has been bought by some members of a target community. Vibes can help a
marketer find members who have not purchased the product and offer them a
discount or other special offer. Also, Vibes can provide event-driven
recommendations, so anyone connected to where the brand is discussed could
receive recommendations at the appropriate time.
An old
concept made new
Finding
like-minded communities in social networks is a fairly novel concept. Ask any
marketer about segmentation and they will talk about the challenge of efficacy.
When talking about social networks, there is no structured approach to finding
like-minded communities. Vibes finds these like-minded communities by analyzing
social interactions and cross-references available member purchase history to
make the perfect offer to the right person at the right time.
Natwar and
his team are now running proof of concepts with leading telecom operators in
India. “Marketers are looking at ways to improve business outcomes with the
availability of unparalleled amount of data emerging through new devices and
channels. Vibes presents a systematic way to capture and analyze this data
creating a broader scope of impact. More importantly, it allows CMOs to be more
prescriptive in their approach,” Natwar Modani said.
Learn more about social business
Labels: analytics, CMO, ibm research - india, marketing, social media
