10 years in the trenches- Best Practices for Your B2B Community

transcript

Ten Years in the Trenches: Best Practices for Your B2B Community

Mike Rowland, PresidentMay 4, 2011

Our ExperienceOur Clients include:

Other organizations we’ve helped while at Participate.com:

Global Experience: Where We’ve Launched Projects

You’ve Come a Long Way Baby…

Rights Reserved.

The Evolution of Community Value

“We have seen an overall lower churn rate among our customers, which really points to the power of community to enhance customer loyalty and retain customers.” – Ed Plaskon, ATT 2002“We realized an ROI of over 100% from our online community.” – Helen Lechner, Cisco 2002“It’s a cost avoidance argument. The savings total is in the low six figures every quarter, and over $1,000,000 in the past two years. Support site visitors have more than tripled while calls to support engineers have actually declined.” – Patrick Saeger, Mercury 2003

Today, Value is Beyond Support Cases

From our recent Value Analysis with NetApp:

Active members using our community to interact and engage with us controlled hundreds of millions of dollars in sales revenue over a 6 month periodActive partners of NetApp engaging in the community delivered over half a billion dollars in partner owned sales revenue over the same time period

So, how do you achieve this type of success with your community?

It’s in the details…

Our AgendaTopic Presenter TimeBehind the Scenes – Goals, Organization, Process

Mike Rowland, Impact Interactions 9:00 to 9:45

Break 9:45 to 10:00What Makes B2B Communities Successful

Measurement for Success Mike Rowland, Impact Interactions 10:30 to 11:00

Break 11:00 to 11:10B2B Community Panel Discussion Navneet Grewal, NetApp

Laura Douglas, CiscoRobert Dell’Immagine, Qualsys

11:10 to 12:00

Who “Owns” Community?Big Question in communities about communities and

LinkedIn groups is:

“What group controls communities in an organization?”

Answer: Whoever controls the content for the community’s members should control the community.

Focus on Goals First…What will audience gain from a business perspective by joining and participating in your community?What will your company gain by offering the community from a business perspective?

Sample Goals:– Support: Deliver cost effective support solutions to our customers within one

business day of engagement– Marketing: Provide 24/7 interactive access to product/services information to help

generate/nurture contacts/leads– Developer: Build strong external team of members who utilize our code and

expertise to extend our product base for their organizations

Then Develop Key Performance Indicators

Conversion– Percent of New Registered Members / First Time Visitors

Engagement– Percent of Active Members / Total Unique Visitors– Percent of Total Downloads/ Total Registered Members

Value– Number of discussions rated answered by initial member – Number of customer organizations represented by community

registration data– Number of contact us submissions from community members

Organizational Structure Directly Impacts Success or Failure

Organizational StructureThe single most important team member for your success is an Executive Sponsor who understands the power of communities– Obtains/defends budget– High level evangelization– Executive voice of the community (blog, welcome message, etc.)

Organization follows the goals you are trying to achieve but requires a few roles to succeed…

The Executive SponsorOur Community will deliver

unique opportunities for our members that reward

our company.

Pictures courtesy of AMCTV.com (http://www.amctv.com/shows/mad-men/cast/ )

The Content ManagerContent is King.

Exclusive, targeted content helps

communities to grow.

The Community ManagerWe must gain

internal resources to build our results.

The AnalystWe must look beyond basic traffic metrics to

uncover value!

The Technology Manager

99.9% uptime folks. That’s what I’m talking

about.

The Facilitator

Efficiency is the Result of Process Planning

Content Audience Needs Structure Calendar - Timing

SME Recruitment Roles, Time Commitment

Content Contributors Area Experts

Escalation Audience Expectation Internal External

Social Media Beacon Strategy Copywriting & Placement Link Strategy

Measurement Traffic, Behavior, Value Reporting Stakeholder

Questions

11:10 to 12:00

So, You Have Your Goals, KPIs, and Team. Now What?

Build Your Tactics!

Tactical Approach to Deliver Strategic Results

Your tactics should deliver the metrics you need to measure and achieve your KPIsTactics include:– Content focus and placement (type of content, feature to use)– Content delivery (video, blog, whitepaper, seed posts, etc.)– Events (online and offline)– Online/Digital Marketing (Promotion)– Outreach (MORE PROMOTION!)

• Yes, this includes social media, email, newsletters, etc.

– Member recognition (external and internal)

Technology Comes Second to Audience Needs

Internal Selling – A Critical Component of Adoption

3 C’s - CONTENT

Outreach is Crucial to Success (And Never Stops)

The Role of Rewards and Incentives

Membership Recognition Programs

Recognition is one of the most powerful tools in a community, yet it is often overlooked– Don’t rely on out of the box features like stars ratings to recognize your top members

Community is about relationships, so build them with your members through contact not technology

– Featured members provide visual incentive to newer members to contribute while rewarding your faithful or stronger members

• Early on, at Cisco’s NetPro community we interviewed our top members then posted their responses as blogs in the community

• Now, you can do so much more

Longer term, beware point systems as they provide a disincentive for newer members to contribute

– How does a new member ever catch up to a member with six years of points? – Instead remove the friction by creating a Hall of Fame or MVP program which de-

emphasizes points and rewards the strength of the information provided by members

Using Social Media To Increase Your Results

Members as ModeratorsMember Reported TOS Violations* vs. Actual Violations

0100200300400500600700800

TOS Violations Reported* Moderator Edits/Deletes

* Actual content reported on a unique basis meaning that the same post reported ten times counts as a single reported instance

11:10 to 12:00

Simplify Your Measurement Categories

Traffic – How many?– Visitors, Visits, Page views, Referrers, Posts,

Uploads, etc.Behavior – What did they do? Who are they?– Page views/Visit, Posts/Visitor, New

Registrations/First Time Visitors, Repeat Visitors, Subscriptions, % Customers, etc.

Value – What did we gain by using this?– Revenue, Leads, Lower Support Costs, Brand

Awareness, Purchase Influence, InsightTraffic & Behavior DO NOT EQUAL VALUE (but they do help drive it)

This is what Sr. Management cares about

This is what Day to Day Management should focus upon

This is your base line information (counts)

Community Life Cycle Determines Where to Focus Measurement

It is not traffic that determines the maturity of an offering, but the behavior of members interacting with each other

Low Maturity Middle Maturity

High Maturity

• Member to member interactions are slow to take place• Over-reliance on host company personnel to answer questions, create Tweets, etc. Minimal blog comments or ratings on content

• Member to member interactions are inconsistent• Host company SMEs play role, but external SMEs role is growing. Content being Tweeted and used in 3rd party blogs, comments are sporadic on blogs.

• Member to member interactions are the majority rather than minority• External SMEs help drive future enhancements to community (ready for major recognition program)

Traffic Metrics

For a new B2B Community project the initial reporting should focus on traffic – Unique Metrics are best!

– Traffic metrics are the main focus until the visitors begin to interact more fully with your offering, meaning multiple members adding content and interacting with each other (maturity of audience starts to improve)

Key metrics to follow:– Visits, Visitors, Page Views, Registrations, Referring Sites, Geographic Location of Visits, Top

Pages, Top Entry Pages, Top Exit Pages, # of Followers/Friends

What traffic tells you:– How effective your outreach and third party social media efforts are in driving visits to your main

site– How effective your content is in meeting member needs– What content is popular with visitors and what is not

Behavior Metrics

Behavior reports on what visitors do once you get them to your site – Looking for more maturity from your audience in terms of how they use your offeringKey metrics to measure are in ratios, not simple counts

– Page views per visit, Page views per visitor, new registrations per total visitors, new content added per visitor, repeat visitors, new discussions, posts, rate of reply, retweets, Mentions (+/-), Comments added per entry, etc.

Behavior metrics tell you:– How effective your offering is in converting visitors to registered members (conversion)– How interesting is your content (consumption)– Are members building your site into their routine (engagement)– How healthy is your community (engagement)

Value Metrics

Value equals economic value in terms that make sense for the business

– Value is extremely difficult to measure until your members start interacting with each other and the site on a regular basis

Analysis is difficult if you base it on community/site metrics alone – Be Creative and Build Relationships!

– The best value analysis comes from comparing community and social media member behaviors against CRM data

Examples of Value Metrics– Purchase frequency of active member vs average customer– Purchase amount of active member vs average customer– Cost of lead generated through social media vs traditional direct mail or tele-marketing efforts

11:10 to 12:00

Questions for Our Panel

Mike Rowland Navneet Grewal Robert Dell'Immagine Laura Douglas