Shoppers who have visited a brand’s website spend 37% more money with the brand and 53% more in the category than non-visitors. The following chart shows how website visitors compare against non-visitors in these key shopping behaviors. Non-visitors are represented by an index of 100.

• Monthly brand spending – Websites are a very powerful influence. Visitors spend 37% more with the brand in the retail store. The study found that the length of time visitors spend on the site is was the key determinant of their likelihood to purchase the brand in the store. What makes a website effective?  The most important factor is fresh content that is updated frequently. Content that provides reasons to buy the brand, product ratings and user generated content are all effective at increasing time spent on the site.

• Category spend – Website visitors are educated in the category and likely to make many purchases in the category with multiple brands.  These consumers spend 53% more money in the category.

• Brand units – Since they spending more money, it makes sense that they are filling their shopping cart with 48% more products.

• Category price per unit – It’s interesting to note that these are savvy shoppers. They pay slightly less per unit than non-website visitors. They know where to look for discounts, and the web is a great place to find offers.

There is obviously great untapped potential here.

“The  research highlights the significant yet underutilized potential of brand websites and digital communications as key drivers for building customer loyalty and preference for CPG brands.”

“Since website visitors have higher affinity to the brand and the overall product category, there is an opportunity for brand marketers to drive loyalty through personalizing the website experience, catering to the preferences of their best customers.”   – John LaRocca, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships at dunnhumbyUSA

While this study isn’t specific to social media, it points to the quality of a brand’s presence across the entire internet.Most brand websites feature their Facebook and Twitter sites prominently. A few of the brand websites, like Skittles.com and Snickers.com, seem to exist just to pull people into their Facebook pages.  It’s a great approach. Instead of just linking people to a Wall or offer page, they deliver a high-impact brand experience on the website and give customers reasons to dig deeper into the activities and conversation on Facebook.

The survey was conducted over a 6 month period by dunnhumby, Accenture and ComScore.  ComScore tracked the online activities of a million web users in the US (with permission of course) and the data was matched against dunnhumby’s in-store shopping data. Accenture looked at websites of CPG brands to evaluate the common components of the most successful websites.

Get your copy from dunnhumby here.

A few of our Agents came by our office recently to talk about this with us. We captured some of their comments in this new video:

Tell us a little about yourself and your family

I have been married to a wonderful man, John, for 14 years. He’s a TERRIFIC cook and Dad to our adopted daugher, Kadence. Kady came home with us from China almost 3 years ago and is the love of our lives. She has 3 sets of grandparents and family across the country (New Mexico, Alaska, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado…) who adore her.

Why do you like being a BzzAgent?

I love testing out the products! I’ve always been a “feedback” kind of person, happy to call a company and let them know a) their product is awesome or, b) there was an issue. Companies won’t know what we think unless they hear from us directly. BzzAgent is a great service for both companies AND consumers. I’ve raved about so many of the items I’ve tried that many of my friends are now loyal consumers.

What have been some of your favorite BzzCampaigns and why?

I’ve loved the cosmetic campaigns, specifically the eye cream and makeup campaigns. As I’m getting older I’m always looking for products to help me age more “gracefully,” but I loathe spending a lot of money if I don’t even know if the product works. Via the BzzAgent campaigns, I’ve become a big fan of the Covergirl Age Defying products!

What makes you want to talk about a product? How do you Bzz?

If I love or loathe a product, I’ll shout it to the world because personal experience is the BEST unbiased information out there.  I Bzz: Face-to-Face over coffee, email, via my Blog & Facebook.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 CDs would you bring? 

“Love Stinks” by J Giles Band; “The Meditative Chopin” by Roy Eaton and “Very Best of Daryl Hall & John Oates” by Hall & Oates. “Love Stinks” is outstanding! Not a bad song on it and good for a laugh (which you’d need alone on a deserted island!). I’ve been a fan of Hall & Oates for alomst 30 years and wouldn’t want to be without them…ever. And “The Meditative Chopin” is my FAVORITE classical music album of all time. Really helps calm you down when things are stressful.

If you could have dinner with any 3 people living or dead, who would they be?

Stephen King – The guy writes some amazing books (where does he come up with this stuff?!) AND plays in a band. Seems to me to be the ideal guest for a lively dinner!

Angelina Jolie – She seems to be well read and charming, which makes for an excellent dinner guest. Plus. we could swap adoption stories AND my daughter would have some kids to play with!

Martin Luther King – The guy took on the Pope & the Catholic Church, was excommunicated, married a former nun, translated the Bible into the language of the people (instead of just Latin), founded a church and was a prolific writer of hymns. I know tradition says to avoid discussion of religion in social situations but this guy would be a fascinating, educated guest!

Thanks for the chance to do some hard thinking, BzzAgent! Looking forward to more campaigns!!

The report ”The Rise of In-store Mobile Commerce” Pew found that during the last holiday season, 52% of adult cell phone owners used their phone in the store to help make a purchase decisions.  If you thought they were standing there banging away on their phones to text their kids in the food court, you might be surprised to see that they were actually conducting some serious point-of-purchase research. The study found:

• 24% looked up online reviews
• 25% gathered price comparisons  (19% of them went ahead and bought the product online when they were in the store)

These shoppers tend to be younger (age 18-49), live in urban areas and have incomes above $50,000.

Online price comparisons are going to happen. As mobile sites get better and as new apps make price aggregation easier, this behavior is only going to increase. But it’s not always all about price.  Pew’s data shows that as many people are looking up product reviews as are checking prices at Amazon or apps like myShopanion. But they’re not looking for ads and company websites. They are checking with friends on social networks and searching for product reviews from other customers to get the info they need to feel confident about a purchase. Building customer advocacy is one area where marketers can influence, and it should be a primary focus.

Filling the web with authentic discussion from customers about quality, efficacy and value is the best way to fight the price war you can’t always control.  The story is even stronger when those discussions include photos of the product in use and demonstration videos.A study last fall from Web Liquid found that social media posts with photos had engagement rates higher than any other type of post.

We are encouraging our Agents to use mobile devices as often as possible to share product opinions and experiences.  Some of our Agents, like busy moms, use smartphones as their primary connection to the web and their social networks. Having an iPhone app not only enables them to share detailed product experiences as it happens, it’s integration with the iPhone’s high-quality camera make it easier than ever to post the personal videos and photos of the product experience in the store and at home with their families. This is the kind of stuff that will get a product into the shopping cart.

Got the app? If not, try it here: http://www.bzzagent.com/pg/iPhone

Scrutinize your competitors, and become friends with them, too. You just might partner to pitch a client, buy one out (or vice versa), or grow the industry together.

Here’s a truth:  At BzzAgent, the word-of-mouth marketing firm where I’m CEO, I go to ridiculous extremes to obtain information about our competitors.

I scan Crunchbase, study websites, and download mobile apps. I troll shamelessly for gossip about our rivals’ executive teams and star players.  And occasionally—when I’m really on my game—I hit pay dirt and obtain a competitor’s proposal to a client. And when that happens, our team goes to work.  We dissect it for valuable bits of information about our opponents’ pricing models, positioning, and capabilities.  And it’s this information that allows us to accelerate our innovation, understand where our competitors are strong—and determine how we can exploit their weaknesses.

For instance, from one proposal we learned that our flat-fee model was being devalued by another company’s “cost-per-engagement” pricing. We created a strategy to counter that objection with clients and prospects. And a few years ago, we got the inside scoop on a new opponent’s practice of throwing in-home product-distribution parties for marketers and got ahead of market by developing the next evolution of the concept.

We’re also interested in information about our competitors’ processes.  For a while, one rival company responded to email queries by tersely exclaiming that they only accepted clients who had a minimum of $1 million to spend.  Hey, we were happy to accept those that ‘just missed’ that criteria.  In another case, a company that tracks social influence positioned itself as a competitor to us—but inside information proved that their engineering-first culture could be perceived as unfriendly to clients.  Our awareness of that issue was the foundation for a very lucrative partnership discussion.

Sun Tsu said it best:  “…know thy enemy.”  As a strategy, this means more than the collection and dissection of as much information on your competitors as possible.  Alongside minor cloak-and-dagger data gathering, you should also be developing real, personal relationships with people at all levels of your competitor’s businesses.  Just as much value—possibly even more—can come from a direct relationship.  Why not identify and tackle common challenges and goals? Growing an industry is often about the sum of its parts. With a rival, you might create standards or align to compete against a regulation. Heck, you may even partner to win a big client.

And if you’re leading an organization and aren’t similarly fixated on both knowledge-gathering strategies, you are putting your company at great risk.

I wasn’t always so obsessed. At one time, I thought BzzAgent was untouchable. I believed we could always stay one step ahead of the competition.  I was convinced that what we did was often right and what our rivals did was often wrong.  Of course we would continue to evolve and they would remain static.  But I was wrong.

Many a corporate pundit will tell you to just focus on your own business. Don’t get distracted by the competition, they will say. In our case, we were so focused on ourselves that we failed to look up in time to see how things had evolved.   We were the first entrant into the space in 2001, and for many years we were considered the only game in town.  We didn’t have to outpitch anyone.  We just had to be us.  When competitors finally showed up around 2005, we mocked the fact that they weren’t nearly as knowledgeable as we were.  We were confident they lacked our experience.  We thought their variations on our model wouldn’t significantly impact us.  But by 2008, we found ourselves losing more projects than we were winning.  Competitors had learned how to pitch against us.  Their innovations weren’t to be mocked; they were to be admired.

I realize now that this happened because competition is different today than it was just a few decades ago.  Business in general is moving much faster and ideas can be replicated on the cheap.  Competitors—and even companies not yet in your space—will adapt and learn and find ways to become better than you.  They are nimble and they will adapt.  And while they may falter, it’s a much better bet to figure they probably won’t.  Competitors are often smarter than you think they are, and if you turn a blind eye to them—or even blink for a moment—they’re going to eat your lunch.  If you care at all about the organization you’re leading, gathering significant information about your competitors isn’t useful.  It’s not something that might be worth your time.  It’s something you must do.

At Smarterer, a Google-backed startup where I’m executive chair, we watched as Gild, a company that had been only tangentially related to us, deployed an almost-exact replica of our solution, which gives people a score based on how adept they are at things like Excel and PHP and Photoshop.  While initial reactions included hand-wringing and disappointment at being imitated so closely, we eventually settled on a valuable realization: There is no longer first-mover advantage.  This has been replaced by an ability-to-adapt advantage.   For those who are willing to gather as much information as possible, react, and innovate ahead of rapid market shifts, success will be inevitable.  For those who fail to pay attention to everything happening around them, getting overtaken is the only possible outcome.   Yes, it’s still true that if you have a good idea, at least 10 other people are doing the same thing—but now they’re watching you as closely as you should be watching them.

But you shouldn’t consider your competition the evil enemy.  They exist for the very same reason you do, and in most cases rising tides do in fact lift all boats. When it came time to sell BzzAgent (we were acquired by Tesco in July 2011), we had a number of direct competitors that became potential suitors, solely because we had shared a beer at one point or worked together on authoring an ethical code for the industry.  You might not end up as BFFs, but having a competitor as a “frenemy” can be incredibly valuable.

How do you get there? The route to a competitor relationship begins simply: Pick up the phone and call them.   Don’t wait; just do it.  Or actively seek out your competitors at a conference and introduce yourself.  Let them know what you admire about them and offer to share an ingredient in your “secret sauce.”  Follow up and follow through. Send holiday cards; share client stories.  This will break down the barriers that hamper your ability to learn from others and grow your business.  The information you gather will be a critical asset that will help you stay ahead in your industry.

And if a frenemy asks, don’t lie.  You can say, “Yes, we do have copies of your proposals. Know what? I’ll send you one of mine. After all, maybe we can learn something from one another.”

Our Super Bowl-related submissions continue to roll in, and today, we veer from the party scene to the social one as Brian Cavoli, an MPG/Carat alum who currently serves as director of marketing at WOM shop BzzAgent, discusses social media measurement come game time.

Social media gets a lot of attention this time of year. Early in January, every social media guru shares predictions for the year about what’s ahead for Google+, Facebook and the next great social sensation. Now at the end of the month, Super Bowl advertisers take over with talk about video contests, ad hashtags and Facebook games to extend the life of their message beyond their 30 seconds of glory in the big game.

30 seconds during the Super Bowl goes by fast and it can be easy to miss. Especially if nature calls, or if a chipful of con queso dip spills on your friend’s new sofa (sorry Steve). Advertisers need to make sure their 30 seconds are memorable. But being memorable is hard. Looking at Nielsen’s Top 10 most-recalled Super Bowl ads for each of the last four years shows just how little people remember.  Just four companies – Doritos, Budweiser, GoDaddy and Pepsi – made up 75 percent of the memorable ads during this period. That’s tough competition, kinda like the New England Patriots of advertisers.

So getting people talking about the brand at the water cooler and online across social media is key to making this investment pay off. But how is that payoff calculated?  Any marketer spending $100,000 a second for an ad has some very sophisticated measurement practices in place to determine its business impact. Most are probably using Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) analysis from Nielsen or other specialists to determine the sales, profitability and ROI of the investment.  Effective marketing is a science and brand managers know exactly what every moving part of their plan is doing to drive sales… except one.   And it’s the one they are relying on to justify the cost for most expensive ad in history.

Social media is often alone in the backfield.  It’s one of the most influential marketing tools there is, yet it isn’t being measured accurately by most marketers.  Everyone tracks “Likes”, fans, followers, retweets, and of course “engagement”. But what does all that really mean? It just represents value. They aren’t financial metrics businesses need to make strategic decisions.  It also makes it impossible to compare social’s impact on the business apples-to-apples with other media.

Social doesn’t have to be an exception. If you use social to help drive sales, it can be measured. BzzAgent has been working with measurement companies including Nielsen, Genpact and Foresight ROI to feed social marketing into the same MMM studies used to evaluate all marketing.  Looking at the results from over 20 studies for leading CPG brands,  we’ve seen on average that social marketing returns an average of $1.50 for every $1 spent. That’s an impressive return. In some cases, the ROI has been as effective as anything in the brand’s marketing mix.

All advertisers know they need an integrated marketing strategy.  Consumers interact with each other and with brands on multiple screens, often at the same time.  We’ll see that more than ever this year since the television broadcast of the game will be streamed online for the first time. Talk about a tweeting paradise. Marketers need to remember that an integrated measurement strategy that includes a financial analysis of social media must go along with it.

If they do, marketers will find that an investment in building social media discussions around a Super Bowl ad will benefit them in two ways.  Not only will the consumer discussions help make the ad more memorable, the investment will shine with a very profitable ROI.

70% of US marketers believe that their next step in social media is to increase their presence across multiple social media platforms, according to an article on eMarketer.  This makes sense since 88% of marketers have already found their way to Facebook and 83% are already active on Twitter.

Facebook can expect to see an additional 6% of those not already engaged on the site, while 8% of non-Tweeters plan to use the site within the coming year. An additional 28% of marketers plan to increase their use of blogs  and 18% want to begin marketing on YouTube.

Sites like Pinterest that are seeing an increase in usage can expect more and more marketers to appear. The site saw a 512% increase in time spent on the site since May 2011.  Pinterest follows right behind Facebook and Tumblr when it comes to time spent on the site and as the trend shows, it is only a matter of time before marketers and brands flock to these sites as well to keep up with their consumers.

Dan Zarella of Hubspot studied this and created a great infographic on how to get more clicks out of Twitter. Here a summary of his findings with a little of our own commentary.

• Keep tweets between 12 and 130 characters.   This makes a lot of sense. You want to say enough to communicate a compelling thought while leaving enough space for the RT and your username. If you want to be re-tweeted, keep your audience in mind and make it as easy as possible for someone to just click RT.  The more time they have to spend figuring out ways to cut words and spaces to get it down to 140, the less likely they’ll be to do it. An RT should just take a second.

• Place links about 25% of the way through.  The highest click rates occurred when the link was a quarter of the way into the message.  This was an eye-opener for me. I usually put the link at the end of the tweet so I can use the beginning of the message to build the call to action. But as they say in the newsroom, don’t bury the lead.  The chart shows that you don’t want to start with the link, but get it in the message early.

• Tweet links a slower pace.  Sending only 1 or 2 links per hour will boost your click rate by as much as 300% compared to more frequent posts.  You don’t want to appear spammy and sending too much of anything becomes noise. Make your tweets count by sending quality links at a slow, but steady basis.

• Choose the right words. Twitter is a conversation so it’s important to recognize the people you are communicating with.  Tweets mentioning others using the word “via” and @ had click rates in the 6% range, triple the click rate of tweets not using the terms. “RT” and “please” were also well received.  It pays to be polite on Twitter.  On the other hand, the use of “@addthis” and “marketing” actually performed worse than tweets without them.  Think about that the next time you click the share button.  My guess is that many share button tweets prepopulate the language in the post so it becomes a lot less interesting if a lot of people tweeting the same thing the exact same way. My takeaway, be creative.

• Experiment using paper.li.  If you are not familiar, paper.li is an automated content aggregator on a particular topic.  Content is collected daily based on keywords or hashtags and posts are sent daily with the words “daily is out”. This must create a sense of ugency people can’t resist. According to the study, these gets click rates in the 30% range.  Sounds like it’s time to set one of these up.

• Use action words: more verbs, fewer nouns.  Tweets with more adverbs and verbs have a much higher click rate than tweets with mostly nouns and adjectives.  This all comes down to being interesting and talking in an active voice. Nouns are passive and boring.

• Tweet on the weekends.  Tweet click rates jump on Saturday and Sunday. A Sysmos report from 2009 shows that Twitter volume is somewhat lower on the weekend, especially on Sunday.  Seems like when activity is lower, your tweet is more likely to get noticed.

• Tweet later in the day.  Clicks rates are high at 9am before fading as the morning coffee wears off.  Lunch must energize people because clicks skyrocket to their highest point in the day at 2pm. Rates fade and jump at 5pm and again between 8 and 10pm.  The study doesn’t indicate whether these are east coast times, but I suspect they are.  So I’m sure the popularity of afternoon tweets has a lot to do with the addition of our west coast friends when they come online.  No matter where you live, avoid 2am to 7am. Nobody’s clicking anything then.

This is interesting stuff. Some of these findings have made me re-think some the ways I approach Twitter for marketing. What about you? Lets talk about it at @bzzagent.

I am a SAHM of 3 kids ages 13, 9 and 6.  I also am a social worker and am trying to start my own online business.  My husband is an MIT educated Computer Engineer.  My oldest child Gavi,  is a computer whiz like his dad – spends most of his time programing and creating video games to sell on the APP store!  My middle child competes with riding horses (hunter/jumper) and is currently 7th in New England in one of her divisions – pretty good for 9 years old. That is Mimi in the picture with Picasso our pony (more like a big dog!). My youngest, Eli, is a funny kid who loves to play sports and make jokes – life of the party type of guy.  I pretty much live for my kids and do whatever I can to make their lives better.  I am an excellent friend and very intense person.  I hold my beliefs strongly and it can be said that I have an assertive personality (ie: I am bossy!)

Why do you love being a BzzAgent?

I love being a BzzAgent because I get to share my opinions and feel like what I have to say matters.  As a mom, I don’t get to use my intellect that much, but by reviewing items and writing about them, I can at least feel like I am contributing in some way to the world.  Plus it is fun to try new things!  It is like Christmas when I get a new BzzKit in the mail – I love it!

What have been your favorite BzzCampains?

Of course my favorite BzzCampaigns have been the Werther’s Caramels and the Lindor Truffles Campaigns! Super yum!! We LOVE candy and chocolate, so everyone in my life was very grateful to be included in those campaigns – Tasting and reviewing candy? That is like a dream job!  My oldest still has dreams of being an “ice cream taster” as his grown-up job.  By participating in these BzzCampaigns he has the idea that his dreams can come true!!

What makes you want to out a product? How do you Bzz?

I guess I want to  talk about a product when it is either really good or really bad – Both ends of the spectrum get me fired up and want to tell others.  I am really all about advocacy as a social worker and as a mom – I want to stand up and tell people when things need to be improved or if they are already spectacular – Either way people need to know the truth.

What would you do if you were immortal for a day?

You are testing me now… I am in the middle of private High School applications with my oldest child and all were are doing is writing essays like these… oy vey!

If I was immortal for a day, I would change the world. I would want to help as many people as possible – for example, go into drug infested neighborhoods and rescue kids that were being abused (I couldn’t get hurt after all).

I would want to end as much suffering as possible – Would I have other magical powers?  If I did, I would make the leaders of the world just get along already!  No more suicide bombs, no more buses blowing up, and no more people hating others for no real reason – Just work it out already people, will you???

(Here’s the press release on the study)

The MMM studies were conducted on 21 campaigns by top measurement firms including Nielsen, Genpact and Foresight ROI between 2009 and 2011. We’d love to be able to discuss the companies involved, but as you can imagine, they hold their ROI cards pretty close to the vest. They are valued clients and we respect that. We can say that they are all large CPG companies, including 3 of the top 10, with products sold at retail nationally.

An average ROI of $1.50 for social marketing is great validation about the financial impact social can make on a business. In some cases, the studies have shown that the ROI has been as effective as anything in the brand’s marketing mix. It’s important to look at ROI in the big picture. We know that ROI analysis practices can differ in every company.  So a lower ROI may still represent a very successful campaign when evaluated in the context of the overall marketing plan.  The great thing is that sophisticated analysis like MMM enables you to do that.

If you are not familiar with MMM, it’s considered the gold standard in media measurement. Some of the biggest marketers in the world use it to quantify the drivers of business performance across all marketing channels and activities.  It is a comprehensive process led by specialty measurement firms and it is usually conducted once a year.

What does this all mean? Two things:

1. Social ROI Can Be Measured Accurately.  Social marketing can be measured using the same sophisticated analysis used on all other media investments. Marketers don’t need to make up new metrics or rely on inexact assessments of influence and engagement to evaluate business impact.  Social can be measured apples-to-apples with other media in the marketing mix.

2. Social is an Effective Sales Channel.  We’ve always known that social media has a tremendous influence on our purchase decisions, but its actual business impact has been unclear.  When social marketing is focused on product attributes, with the right targeting, cultivation and measurement practices, it can be a highly effective sales channel for brands.

Social media is used many different ways in an organization. Each department has their own communication goals, so their metrics of success should reflect that.  If you are in marketing and looking to support the sales effort of the company, then social media can be an effective tool for driving sales.  With the right practices, it can be managed and measured the same way you evaluate marketing investments in every other media format.   As we’ve seen from this data, often its social media that comes out on top.

At the National Retail Federation’s Big Show event in NY this week, Macy’s CMO Peter Sachse spoke on a panel with dunnhumby’s Stuart Aitken and Katherine Black about using customer data to make business decisions.

Talking about the importance of the customer is one thing, but when it’s time to make important business decisions, most fall back on the old P&L.  Real customer-centric decision making takes a commitment.  That has to start at the top because these decisions don’t always enhance the P&L in the short term.

Peter gave a great example of that.  A particular product line wasn’t doing well in in their stores. Turnover wasn’t right, volume wasn’t right, and the gross margin wasn’t right.  So from a purely P&L standpoint, the line should be cut.  But with access to dunnhumby customer data, an entirely different picture emerged.  Looking at the data through a customer lens revealed that this line was a favorite of Macy’s most loyal and frequent shoppers.  The data told them that if they fired these customers by cutting this line, “they’d lose this much business from cosmetics, this much business from intimate apparel, and this much from the mens store.”

For Macy’s, the decision was easy. Keep the product in the store and keep their best customers happy. Peter says, the customer “gets a seat at the table every single day with us”.

Making real customer-centric business decisions like this requires a commitment at every level in the organization.  Stuart Aitken said that when dunnhumby engages with a client, one of the first things they do is align the customer language across the company. They have to define exactly what it means to be customer-centric so all stakeholders across the company think and act the same way.

You’ve got to treat your customers well, but you have to treat your best customers better.

The same is true with social media. Your Facebook and Twitter followers may be social savvy, but that doesn’t mean they are good customers.  The number one reason people follow a company on Facebook and Twitter is to get freebies.  These aren’t necessarily the people who know a lot about your product or have the motivation to spread their opinions to others.

Look at social media followers through that same customer lens.  Use shopper data to identify your best customers in social media and give them unique brand experiences. They’ll reward you not only with additional purchases, but with a personal advocacy that can influence all those around them.

Tell us a little about yourself and your family

I am currently a stay at home Mom to a beautiful 9 month old baby girl, Bella. My husband and I recently moved to Nashville, TN where he works from home. We love it here, but miss our family in Charleston, SC. With my staying home and my husband working from home our quality of life is wonderful, so we decided that it was worth it to be here. We are enjoying being around each other as much as possible!

Why do you love being a BzzAgent?

I love being a BzzAgent because not only does it let me try out new and exciting products, but I am able to keep in touch with other moms in the area through bzzing about products and sparking up conversations I may not have had otherwise.

What have been some of your favorite BzzCampaigns?

My favorite BzzCampaigns so far have been the Maybelline Lots of Lashes and Baby Lips campaign and the Private selection campaign.

Maybelline was so fun for me to share with my girlfriends and they loved getting the products to try. Private Selection was amazing and we were able to have two nights of friends over to enjoy it as well. The products are so great-I will truly continue to buy both products!

What makes you want to Bzz about a product?

Why wouldn’t I want to talk about them!? I get excited every time I get a box in the mail and I can’t wait to Bzz about it! My friends think it’s great and we all enjoy trying the products out. I love Bzzing about products.

How do you Bzz?

I first start bzzing through facebook and twitter. I also meet with a group of moms once a week. Everyone is always asking me what’s next to try and everyone gets excited!!!

If you could have dinner with any 3 people, who would they be?

John Adams because he was such a stand up guy, so intriguing, and a crucial part of our American history

Carrie Underwood because I just adore her and her beautiful voice. I would like to grasp how it feels to be a superstar with an amazing voice

Steve Jobs. Oh how I would love to get in that head of his and hear some of his ideas and views. He has transformed technology as our world knows it.

Take a look at some of the findings from the “Social Brand Experience” report from the CMO Council.  They interviewed both brands and consumers about their use of social media and some of the differences are eye-opening.  It seems that Brands are still very preoccupied with themselves on Facebook.  They are missing the real reason people visit them on Facebook, and more importantly, they are missing a tremendous opportunity to recognize and cultivate their very best customers who are looking to deepen their relationship with the brand.

When brands were asked why they believe customers “Like” their brand on Facebook, most said it was because of all the great content they put on the page.  “The content is agreeable” was the top response with 57% of respondents.  Loyalty and advocacy are afterthoughts.  It’s not until you get down to the bottom of the list do you find things like “loyal customers” and interest in connecting and helping with other customers.

When it comes to responding to “likes”, marketers know its about engagement and continuing the conversation. Although, it is funny that more that 20% of them have no idea. And it’s scary that more companies think this means they can deliver more advertising (10%) than think they should be rewarding advocacy and brand champions (7%).

Here’s the eye-opener.  When consumers were asked why they like brands on Facebook, the number one reason was “I’m a loyal customer”.  Where’s the love for agreeable content? It’s 5^th on the list.

Facebook is a great place for brands and consumers to connect. But marketers need to look at what consumers are telling them in these charts. Company Facebook pages aren’t about you. Many following your page don’t care as much about all the content on the page as you do. That’s what your website is for.  Your loyal customers are seeking you out on Facebook, and many of them are eager to advocate for you by sharing their opinions and by helping others with their purchase decisions. Don’t treat them like freebie hunters.

With dunnhumby, we’ve got some exciting ways for you to identify loyal customers who are also active in social media so you can give them exactly what they are looking for – personal attention and new products to share with the world.

I’m married with 3 kids. I was laid off work last summer along with 14 other people from a Healthcare Software company. While it was harsh at first realizing I’m considered old technology, I’ve adapted. I love being home with the kids and being THAT mom who brings the orange slices to the soccer games. I love being outdoors and enjoy being with my family. I’m hoping to go back to school in January to become an Education Assistant.

Why do you like being a BzzAgent?

I love trying new products and I really like talking about them. I find its a great icebreaker, too. I don’t know how many times I’ve started chatting with parents I don’t really know in the school yard about products we’ve tried. I love the variety of the campaigns, too. One minute I can be Bzzing about Scrubbing Bubbles, the next it may be Bananagrams.

What have been some of your favorite BzzCampaigns and why?

The Sol beer was a good campaign. I enjoyed it because I got to Bzz about it sitting in my back yard and drinking beer with friends. What’s not to like about that? I also liked the Tabasco sauce campaign. The mini bottles were a great conversation starter at work. No one had ever seen them so tiny before!

What makes you want to talk about a product? How do you Bzz?

When it comes to talking about a product, I like to focus on the ease of use, the cost, and how it makes life easier. Everyone I know needs a little help with at least one of those things, so why not talk about it?

If you could have dinner with any 3 people living or dead, who would they be? Why?

Bruce Willis

Queen Elizabeth II

My great grandma

Sounds like an odd combination, I will agree. Here’s why. Bruce Willis is my number 1 guy. I love his films and I think he’s a charmer off screen. I think he would be a wonderful conversationalist who would make everyone feel involved.

Queen Elizabeth II. I am English by birth. My love for the monarchy is born and bred into me. I have a lot of respect for the Queen. She’s changed the way the Royals have operated over her reign. I would love to have dinner with her.

And finally the most important person on this list is my great Grandma. She died back in the 90′s. She was the nicest human being that ever lived. I love her and miss her dearly. I’d love one more dinner with her.

Some of the stats included in the ebook are:

• Most retweeted tweeters
• Most buzzed about topics and brands
• Most buzzed about speakers (includes our own Paul Hunter!)
• Conversation volume by social media source

Commentary in the the ebook include articles from 14 attendees including Chris Laird of P&G Tremor, Deborah Holland of Publishers Clearing House, Joe Fairless of Mr Youth, and yours truly. I’ve got an article in there about scaling social through better measurement.

I think the ebook is a great idea and WOMMA did a nice job with it. You can download it free on their site at: http://womma.org/ebook/

Consumers are spending more time than ever on social networking websites. But as they spend more time connecting with their peers, a peculiar shift has happened. They are not just talking to each other, but leaving reviews and opinions about brands to guide each other as well. According to a study by Nielsen and NM Incite, consumers are far more likely to trust the ratings and reviews of their fellow consumers than any form of direct brand communication, and consumers know it. They are leading the way with recommendations and sharing personal experiences for anyone looking for them.

When consumers research products online, 60% rely on social networking sites to learn about brands. Only 50% look to the company’s website for information.

Consumers trust reviews and ratings written by fellow consumers, and as a result, have developed a tendency to rate and review products themselves. They post the types of comments and reviews they would seek themselves. 3/5 of active social media users write reviews of products, brands and services (this ratio is even higher with women).

Social Media users are highly engaged with discussing brand experiences online, which may be contributing to the fact that more than half of active social networkers follow brands. Consumer-generated reviews and product ratings are the most preferred sources of product information among social media users.

Sharing Experiences

So what’s the reasoning behind writing reviews, sharing experiences, and following brands on social media sites? The study identified three clear motivating factors: positive brand recognition, consumer protection, and feedback.

Many consumers are advocates on their on accords- they just like to show their loyalty. This doesn’t mean they don’t still liked to get recognized. 61% of consumers leave reviews and ratings on social media sites to praise brand experiences and 41% do so to receive discounts.

58% are on the look out for others. They do not want other consumers to make the same mistakes they made. A number of consumers share company experiences in order to protect friends and family from bad experiences.

In the 18-34 demographic, there’s another factor compelling them to share. 42% register complaints in order to receive support, and they expect that support within 12 hours of posting. If they don’t get the response they seek, or any feedback at all, you can expect there will be more complaints to come. It’s important not to let that 42% of complaints spread- especially when most comments are easily resolved with a simple response- to let the consumer know you heard them- and appreciate them. After all, these are your consumers, and your potential advocates.

We often talk about our Agents and how great they are, but we realized we don’t talk about them enough, individually. We asked Agents on our Facebook page to tell us about themselves, their hobbies, and why they love being a BzzAgent. Over the next few weeks we invite you to see what it means to be an Agent and just what makes our Agents want to Bzz.

Tell us a little about yourself

My name is Stephanie Cole. I am a 30 year old stay at home Mother of 2 children and 2 dogs in Arlington, TX. My son will be 4 and my daughter just turned 2, so my house is pretty chaotic.

Why do you like being a BzzAgent?

I absolutely LOVE being a BzzAgent. It gives me the opportunity to try out new products and share my views with my friends, family, and strangers that are local and across the US. I am big into spreading the word and introducing new products that I believe in and have personally tested so that I can give my honest opinion. I also love learning about new products via the web and social networking sites from my fellow BzzAgents on other campaigns. The best opinions are honest ones through personal experience.

What have been your favorite BzzCampaigns so far?

Burts Bees Skin Solutions for Sensitive Skin and Green Mountain Coffee Fair Trade. I was equally thrilled with both products. I am a coffee lover and was able to throw a Green Mountain Fair Trade coffee get-together to spread the word and I had a blast doing it. I am also excited to be introduced to the world of Fair Trade and to educate my friends and family.

The Burt’s Bees campaign was also a blast. I have completely changed my skin care routine because of the results of the Cleanser and Moisturizer. Good Stuff!

What makes you want to Bzz about a product?

Having a good experience with a product or getting fantastic results make me want to Bzz. There are so many products and choices out there. When I find something that is worthwhile, I want to share with everyone and spread the Bzz so that they too can experience it for themselves. I love to Bzz via web cam, Facebook (of course), twitter, at the store to random shoppers, and shopping reviews. I am big into online shopping and love to read reviews before I make a purchase. If I can share my knowledge on a product, then I want to post on as many shopping sites as possible to assist others with their shopping decisions.

If you could have dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be?

I would pick, my Mother-In-Law. I never met her and my husband and his sister have the greatest stories about her. She seemed like such a strong and amazing woman. I would love to meet her to introduce myself.

Every marketer using social media to generate new business should have ROI high on their New Year’s resolutions list this year. Social media has grown up and it’s time for its measurement practices to do the same. We’ve been measuring success based on fuzzy metrics of engagement and influence long enough.  Calculations like return on engagement, return on trust and viral coefficient are great for showing value. But value is not the same as units sold, revenue and ROI.  Business impact is a financial metric, and it must be reported in financial terms.

Data on purchase intent does not cut it in statistical models. The analysis must accurately measure isolated campaign impact with valid and industry-proven methodologies.  Measurement at this level is sophisticated and must be conducted by someone without a horse in the race.  Actual purchase data can be collected from retail loyalty cards and third-party measurement firms to provide the validation needed.

Measurement firms have taken proven analytic testing processes and applied them to a digital medium. Since these are proven methodologies, they give marketers confidence in the results that they are going to see.  Here are three ways to measure the sales and ROI of your social shopper marketing program.

1. Loyalty Card Matched Panel Tests

Measuring sales based on actual household purchases made with retail loyalty shopper cards closes the loop and provides data on your sales and ROI.  This household-level view of purchases provides a robust understanding of consumer purchase behavior. Companies like BzzAgent’s parent company dunnhumby manage shopper card programs for many of the world’s largest retailers. When card holders involved in a social marketing program make a purchase, marketers can connect the dots back to their social media activities. This not only measures purchases made by the customer, but it quantifies the influence they had on others around them.

Studies of purchases from households exposed to the social marketing campaign are compared with a control group of households not exposed to it. If the footprint of the retailer is significant enough, tracking social media sales with loyalty card transactions will be an excellent representation of your sales impact and ROI.

2. Matched Market Analysis

Matched Market Analysis looks are store level transactions. Analytic companies like SymphonyIRI use a two-celled test and control approach to measure sales lift between two geographic markets. For a social media campaign, two markets with similar characteristics are selected. People living in one market are exposed to a social media campaign and people in the other market are not.

With this level of detail, measurement firms apply statistical techniques to match store-to-store sales data to isolate the sales impact of the social media effort. Even though social media sharing occurs nationally, there is a sufficient concentration of people in the individual’s local area. Some variables can’t be controlled in the test. One of them is price and promotion. For example, if coupons are tripled at Massachusetts supermarkets but not in Los Angeles, the measurement firms adjust the data for this variable.

3. Market Mix Modeling

Market Mix Modeling (MMM) allows marketers to look at the big picture of a brand’s marketing.  Firms like Nielsen analyze media effectiveness across channels to evaluate every element of the marketing mix.  The analysis is able to distinguish sales volume from marketing compared to just being on the shelf. The results demonstrate the sales volume and ROI from each media channel. MMM studies are usually conducted annually to keep a pulse on the changing trends in marketing and media effectiveness.

With the right data collection practices, social marketing data can be analyzed in these models.  Since social is typically a smaller media investment, it can be obscured by the large footprint of television or other media. Keys to getting social media to register in a MMM study include variation and granularity of the impressions over time. Discussion data must include weekly impression volume on a market level.

The results have been impressive. BzzAgent analyzed the social marketing ROI from a variety of MMM studies and found that for every dollar spent, social marketing returned an average ROI of $1.56. That’s on average.  For some products, the ROI reached as high as $4.19.

A Resolution That’s Easy to Keep

Studies show that people who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than those who don’t.  Start the year off right. Resolve to evolve your social marketing measurement practices in 2012 and you’ll develop a habit that can change your business.

With all that sharing running through their plug-in every day, they’ve got a good pulse on how people prefer to share stuff with friends online.  AddThis created an infographic that could be considered as the state of social sharing in 2011.

Here are some of the takeaways:

• According to their analysis, Facebook made up 52% of all sharing on the web this year.  This is up from 44% last year and 33% in 2009.

• Greg Cypes, the director of product at Clearspring, the company behind AddThis, told the NYTimes that the sharing of a link, an update, or a photo on Facebook is much more impactful for driving traffic.

• Although Twitter sharing jumped 577% this year, it’s a long way behind.  It accounted for just 13.5% of sharing in 2011.

• Chart climbers this year include huge gains from Tumblr and Google +1.

• The other big area of growth is with mobile. Sharing on mobile devices grew 6X this year. This is driven mostly by tablets – iPad sharing grew about 600% surpassing sharing on the iPhone last summer.

• On the other hand, Digg and Myspace were the major sites that lost the biggest share of sharing.

• The most popular day for sharing is Wednesday

• The most popular time of day is 9:30am Eastern