DISQUS

Jake Rosen · 6 months ago

This is an unbelievably well written post. I agree with almost everything you said, with one exception. I think the ideal situation would be to have 2 branches within a company. One offering the product with activation, maintenance and all other services that go along with that. The other branch would be the strategy/consulting services. The two separate offerings would be acquired with unique contracts, but housed within the same company.

This obviously takes a fair amount of capital, the likes of which only a couple companies can currently pull together, but that's why it is my ideal situation.

maxkalehoff · 6 months ago

Thanks Jake. I suppose it could happen within a holding company approach.
Although, I'd suggest the product side would be less likely to succeed in a
holding company approach, particularly if the holding company is an
ad-agency holding company.

Brandon · 6 months ago

Great synopsis. ROI and actionable data are clearly the missing pieces in all marketing equations, particularly as it relates to social media. While I agree with Jake regarding the ideal scenario, the reality is that offering product and service under one umbrella is not realistically feasible at this stage of the game. Perhaps it will be attainable at some point in the future, but serving both masters is a formidable task and attempting to do so will likely result in two mediocre offerings.

maxkalehoff · 6 months ago

Thanks Brandon. We're on the same page. This conflict of two masters is rarely addressed.

Robert Alaney · 6 months ago

Interesting!

I feel like there is a scarcity of good marketing today. Good marketing means which can convert the leads into sales. The only marketing that has moved me in the last couple of years is Social Media Optimization.

briantroy · 6 months ago

The best part of this post was the last sentence. "It will find its greatest success by subtly integrating into the morphing DNA of numerous business and decision-making processes."

My theory is that this space (call it what you will) will follow a very similar trajectory to that of CRM. Very little of the initial hype will become real-world ROI. The ROI will come from companies - as you put it - integrating it into existing business and decision-making processes. The challenge (as I see it) is for vendors in this space to stop trying to tell them all the questions and all the answers. The only questions that matter are those that matter in decision-making processes that already exist - to the extent this "source" can help inform those processes it will be adopted and generate ROI.

So I totally disagree that "point solution" applications answering specific questions will dominate... as a matter of fact, I'd argue that success will depend on the ability to ask un-anticipated questions and extract information.

maxkalehoff · 6 months ago

We agree in many ways, but when I say focused mini-apps, I'm talking about data that automatically, without questions, influence transactions. When that happens, you move closer to a currency. For example, television viewers are bought and sold off of Nielsen currency data, as are keywords on the Google Adwords marketplace. Surfacing unanticipated questions is important is important -- but those are insights, not directly tied to transactions and exchange of dollars.

briantroy · 6 months ago

I get troubled by the notion that there will be a ranking/scoring algorithm for Social Media akin to Page Rank or Nielsen - simply because that system will inevitably be mired in the mess that is authority and influence. I get that rank is what the PR/Marketing crowd wants, and I understand why, I just doubt the efficacy of any such ranking.
More to my point, we tend to seek a single "lever to pull" which directly results in revenue (sales) - but that is a myth. The reality is - what generates and keeps customers is consistent execution across a business. As you put it, it is the decision making processes. More importantly, it is the quality with which those decision making processes accurately reflect the needs/wants of the target market across the spectrum of business activities.

Understanding who the influencers/authorities are is important, but it is far more important to do the right things based on the insights gained. Doing that enables the influencers to to carry your message for you with authenticity and credibility. Putting influencers/authorities in your pocket and failing to execute the on the insight is just more top down marketing.

For my money - it is all about the insights applied across the business.

kate_niederhoffer · 6 months ago

Hi Max, as you know I too remain intimately tied to social media measurement, despite not being in the space anymore. Strangely, the more companies I'm exposed to, the more I realize how nascent this space still is. There's lots of good, new technology emerging, but the early pioneers still hold their own - in technology and in unparalleled horizontal expertise.

The part of your post that really resonated with me is where you call out human involvement as the key to success. To use O'Reilly's terminology, this is truly a place where human augmentation is critical. No matter how intelligent a software solution is, listening really requires human interpretation. Scientists inherently know this-- BTW read this month's Wired about Vivek Kundra's efforts to liberate data (data.gov) and the advances expected by being able to merge, integrate, and of course crowdsource interpretation of raw data. Point is: you can only go so far with pure technology and raw data. Likewise, eyeball hierarchical linear modeling and the like is not so effective.

The problem that I see rampant today is overconfidence in people purchasing pure product solutions, failing to adopt strategy, training, and dissemination pathways for findings, simply because the barriers to usage are so low. Perhaps this is a result of what you call out on the sell-side of lacking the discipline of a solid business goal.

maxkalehoff · 6 months ago

Kate, smart comment. You sound like a highly intelligent, well-educated consultant at a strategy firm whose customers are Fortune 1000 companies. There's definitely a place for that, and the high level insights and strategy you offer clients in that context absolutely depends on human augmentation. But there are vast, minute, in-the-trench operations that will be influenced by social media which are more clearly connected to mundane business operations. Those are the mini, productized apps I see eventually making a difference. For example, I'm intrigued by simple integration of listening feeds into CRM systems like Salesforce.com or Netsuite -- where companies don't take on social media measurement as some sort of standalone art or high level strategy, but, instead, quietly plug it into a standard, mature business operation and do business better. The answer actually can be simple, and does not necessarily require a boil-the-ocean approach.

Agree, the space is immature.

Terrintokyo · 6 months ago

This is an enormously useful post, thank you. I think that human analysis and intuition, as well as clear, attainable ROI goals, are the necessary complement to either the product or service-focused measurement tools: I don't think that will change, so that's where my focus is, as a small business owner.