Posts Tagged ‘social-commerce’

New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Sam Decker 10 reasons why 100 billion impressions matter to you

February 28th, 2010 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
10 Reasons that 100 Billion Impressions Matter To You
This week we passed the 100 billion mark, meaning we have served over 100 billion impressions of social commerce content (questions & answers, reviews and stories). So what does that mean to you as a marketer?
It means that hundreds of millions of people worldwide have made better purchase decisions (including you)
It means that hundreds of retailers and manufacturers are getting “Customer Oxygen” into their company, transforming the way  they do business
It is evidence that markets truly are conversations (See chapter 4 of Cluetrain Manifesto and the meaning of Bazaarvoice)
It means that this is just the beginning. The customer content “flywheel” is now turning at full speed and we will continue to innovate with our clients to keep up.
It means that if you haven’t started to facilitate customer conversations, you have less to fear.
It means there is an ecosystem of relevant product & service conversations across the web, which can amplify the voice of your customer
It means that you will see more search results come from product-related customer content
It’s evidence that customers are more likely to read this type of content than other ‘community’ content that is not relevant to shopping.
It means that social commerce is a scalable marketing strategy, proven by over 750 brands.
It means that you now have a reason to champion the voice of your customer to senior executives.
What else does it mean? I welcome your comments.
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100 billion impressions servedAs Brett posted earlier, this week we passed the 100 billion mark, meaning we have served over 100 billion impressions of social commerce content (questions & answers, reviews and stories).

So what does that mean to you, as a marketer?

  1. It means that hundreds of millions of people worldwide have made better purchase decisions (including you).
  2. It means that hundreds of retailers and manufacturers are getting “Customer Oxygen” into their company, transforming the way they do business.
  3. It is evidence that markets truly are conversations (See chapter 4 of Cluetrain Manifesto and the meaning of “Bazaarvoice”).
  4. It means that this is just the beginning. The customer content “flywheel” is now turning at full speed and we will continue to innovate with our clients to keep up.
  5. It means that if you haven’t started yet, you have less to fear from facilitating customer conversations than ever.
  6. It means there is an ecosystem of relevant product and service conversations across the web, which can amplify the voice of your customer.
  7. It means that you will see more search results come from product-related customer content.
  8. It’s evidence that customers are more likely to read this type of content than other ‘community’ content that is not relevant to shopping.
  9. It means that social commerce is a scalable marketing strategy, proven by over 750 brands.
  10. It means that you now have a reason to champion the voice of your customer to senior executives.

This is an inflection point, and just one data point that pales in comparison to the transformation occurring inside our clients’ businesses. Which, in the end, is making products and services better. Which makes me proud to bring the customer voice to market!

Impression Counter

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Customer Centricity, Social Commerce Summit

Heather Brunner Nominations open for the third annual Social Commerce Awards

February 23rd, 2010 by Heather Brunner Chief Operations Officer

How has UGC improved your business? Is your brand a “social commerce rock star”? Nominations are now open for the 2010 Social Commerce Awards, and we want your brand’s story!

The Social Commerce Awards recognize the companies that are transforming their business with Bazaarvoice. Past winners include Helzberg Diamonds, Intuit/TurboTax, JC Whitney, and Sephora. This year’s categories are:

  • Rookie of the Year Award (2) – These two companies are new on the social scene and pioneering social strategy in their own ways.
  • Social Commerce Play of the Year Award – This company ran a really interesting and innovative social campaign that made customers and the industry stand up and take notice.
  • Social Commerce Rockstar Award – This company understood that success must be measured. Their campaign or strategy directly related to a bottom-line goal, and they nailed it.
  • Social Commerce MVP Award – This company used the power of their most influential customers to create a bigger conversation that attracted a whole new group of people to engage with their brand. Success is defined as how many new customers they attracted and how they kept the conversation alive and kicking.
  • Customer Oxygen Award – This company used the customer voice to make huge changes throughout the business. Leveraging user-generated content changed their day-to-day business habits, and produced measurable results across the organization.

Want more information? Think your company has the story to win an award? Talk to your Client Success Director to learn more and to nominate your brand! Nominations are open until March 25th, and winners will be announced April 21, 2010.

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User-Generated Content, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker Top 10 Bazaarblog Posts of 2009

December 30th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

We’ve reached that time of year when everyone looks back. The lists of the year’s Trending Twitter Topics and Most Googled Words have made their rounds. Here’s a look at the Bazaarblog posts that topped 2009.

10. New “Participation Chain” White Paper – Tying contributions together to gain deeper customer engagement… and results! My white paper with Ze Frank explored the cycle of engagement brands should employ to keep the customer conversation going. You can download the full white paper here.

9. How one man got a whole mob dancing. A video from the Sasquatch Music Festival illustrated the ideal growth cycle of an online community.

8. Bazaarvoice Named #1 Place to Work. The Austin Business Journal recognized Bazaarvoice as the Best Place to Work.

7. “Bad” reviews are good for your brand. I addressed a common point of hesitation for brands considering embracing UGC – the fear of negative feedback.

6. Argos UK sets new Bazaarvoice record for number of submissions in one day! Our biggest European client doubled our previous submission record, thanks to an effective holiday review strategy.

5. The “Man Purse” in ‘The Hangover’. Our CEO Brett Hurt found humor in the very highly-rated “man purse” featured in Warner Brothers’ The Hangover.

4. Rubbermaid Improves Customer Experience through Ratings & Reviews. Manager of eMarketing & Brand Communications at Rubbermaid shared the brand’s strategy toward negative reviews.

3. Leadership Themes from My Talk at The Wharton School. Brett highlighted the key leadership themes from his talk at his alma mater.

2. Social media drives sales — if you know how to use it. I discussed the ways brands should use social media to drive real sales results – not just number of fans.

1. Netflix vs. Blockbuster: Round Four (Lights Out?). Brett analyzed the word-of-mouth lessons learned from Netflix’s (won?) battle with Blockbuster.

2010 promises to be a defining year for social commerce, so stay tuned to Bazaarblog. Happy New Year from all of us at Bazaarvoice!

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Awards, New at Bazaarvoice, Research

Sam Decker Bazaarvoice #1 for Ratings & Reviews Among Internet Retailer 500

August 3rd, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

guideWe’re always excited to see the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, and the 2009 edition just came out. Not only does it list the top online retailers based on annual online revenue, but it also gives a breakdown of the top eCommerce vendors these top retailers use.

The intent of the vendor ranking is to help retailers make decisions about suppliers. Internet Retailer is a great organization and we’re happy to be listed as one of the top providers of customer reviews; however, we noticed that the numbers can be a bit deceiving. The breakdown cited Bazaarvoice as serving  40 of the Internet Retailer 500. In fact, we are proud that we partner with over 100 of the Internet Retailer 500, making Bazaarvoice #1 for ratings and reviews, not to mention for social commerce solutions.

Why did they cite only 40? In the case of the Internet Retailer Guide, the methodology is for retailers to self report about which eCommerce providers they used. It’s the prerogative of the one person who fills out the survey to choose or know who their provider is for each function of their ecommerce ecosystem. It’s possible larger clients are less inclined to divulge all their providers, or perhaps the person filling out the survey doesn’t know all of their providers. Either way, according to our actual client records, Bazaarvoice was vastly underreported in this year’s Guide. We noticed other large eCommerce providers, such as IBM and ATG, were also underrepresented in the survey.

You could also look at market leadership in terms of size of clients or business size. In the Internet Retailer Guide, no additional weight was given to the largest retailers – the #1 retailer is ranked the same as #500. While smaller retailers may serve niche markets, the huge mass retailers amass tons of internal knowledge and expertise to become the largest in the United States, and more of the larger retailers choose Bazaarvoice. Among the Top 50 retailers, Bazaarvoice outranks the closest competition by a ratio of nearly 7:1 with clients like Best Buy, Dell, QVC, Macy’s, Costco, Overstock.com, and more. And in the Top 100, we outserve our nearest competitor by a ratio of 4:1.  See our partial client list here (not all clients give permission to display their logos).clients
When you factor in retailers who don’t have reviews or host them in-house, Bazaarvoice’s leadership is even more pronounced, with more than 80% of the Top 100 retailers choosing Bazaarvoice. And we are just talking about our Ratings & Reviews product, not to mention our other social commerce solutions, such as Ask & Answer and Stories.

This is an important point because as a hosted provider, part of our value to each client is learning from the whole. We help shape and share best practices from innovative, smaller clients (such as Vintage Tub and Bath or Fair Indigo) to large multi-channel retailers, such as Best Buy, Dell, and Costco. We truly believe we are inventing the future with our clients, and with a cross-vertical client list across small and large clients, we are able to innovate products rapidly (every seven weeks) and share best practices that help all clients grow ROI from social commerce.

Today over 525 brands, including over 100 of the Internet Retailer 500, turn to Bazaarvoice because we are the leader in ratings and reviews…and moreover the leader in social commerce.  We’d rather not beat our chest about these things, but we are proud of the company we keep, proud of what we’ve accomplished, and believe it’s important that our clients know the facts.

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User-Generated Content, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker Word of mouth matters

June 18th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Duke University and American Marketing Association poll of CMOsAt a time when customer switching is high, it’s increasingly important to foster a trusting relationship with your customers. In a recent Duke University and American Marketing Association poll of chief marketing officers, building a trusting relationship with customers was named the second overall customer priority for the next year, just behind service excellence.

At the same time, it’s increasingly difficult to gain customers’ trust. Only 17% of people trust advertisers, according to a 2007 Myers Publishing study, and a 2008 Gallup poll found that only 10% of advertisers were perceived as trustworthy by consumers.

Customers do, however, trust recommendations. “Recommendations from friends” were found to be the most trusted source across all media in a 2009 TNS poll. Capitalizing on these recommendations is crucial for brands in building customer trust.

What’s more, customers recognize that these recommendations actually influence their behavior. Over half of all consumers believe word-of-mouth influences their restaurant choices, according to an October 2008 BIGresearch study. Word-of-mouth had different effects on different types of purchases and among different races, but these word-of-mouth recommendations always matter.Consumers believe word-of-mouth influences their purchases

It’s one thing to recognize the importance of word-of-mouth, but it’s another to capitalize on it. Allow your customers to contribute feedback and recommendations in a forum where other, like-minded customers will see it. Make it easy for them to share these recommendations with their existing networks of friends. Place this UGC where other customers can find it – on your website and product pages – so it can influence your customers in every phase of the purchase path.

Enabling conversation with your customers will build trust in your brand – and drive your sales, too. Word-of-mouth matters; make it work for your brand.

Images courtesy of eMarketer.

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BrandVoice, Ratings & Reviews, Word of Mouth, eCommerce

Sam Decker Social media drives sales — if you know how to use it

June 15th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Downgrading the sales effectiveness of social networks seems to be the trendy thing to do these days.

A recent report by Knowledge Networks found that social media doesn’t drive purchases — or at least, that customers don’t think it does. The survey results indicated that less than 5% of social media users say they regularly turn to social media for guidance on purchase decisions, and only 16% of social media users say they are more likely to buy from companies that advertise on social sites. Some blogs are citing the report as evidence that social media doesn’t drive purchases, chalking social commerce up to no more than hype.

The fact is, social commerce is about much more than a corporate brand presence on Facebook or Twitter. Successful social commerce marketing is about soliciting structured feedback relevant to shopping and buying, and making this feedback available to customers making these purchase decisions.

Getting useful feedback on your product and brand

The first step to driving sales through social media is to build a collection of rich, structured feedback relevant to your customers. Enable customers to contribute their experiences with your brand and products, and reward them for their contributions.

Jon Nordmark, founder and CEO of eBags, had a number of useful insights on encouraging contribution at this year’s Social Commerce Summit. Jon found that while promotions are always a great way to drive reviews and traffic, a simple “thank you” can turn a one-time reviewer into an influencer. Recognize your top reviewers individually and on your site to keep them contributing and encourage new reviewers.

Making feedback available to customers making purchase decisions

Once you have relevant feedback, place it where your customers will be influenced by it. Input and opinions from people like them help consumers cut through the clutter and find what they’re looking for. Including ratings and reviews on product pages allows customers to read about products in their own language, building trust in your offering and encouraging customers to buy.

David Tice, Vice President and Group Account Director for Knowledge Networks, drew an important conclusion from the social media study. “Social media users do not have a strong association between these sites and purchase decisions,” Tice said. “They see them as being more about personal connections – so finding ways to embrace that powerful function is key.”

While consumers may not get on Facebook looking for ads or corporate profiles, their peers’ opinions do influence them. Customers want the opinions of people like them; leverage their personal social networks to promote your brand. ShoutIt! allows customers to easily share their reviews and feedback with their existing social media networks. Customers can then promote their opinions to those they influence most – their networks of friends on their Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and del.ici.ous accounts.

Bazaarvoice clients know firsthand the positive impact of user-generated content on sales. Your customers are your best marketers; empower them to make social media work for your brand.ShoutIt! lets customers share reviews across their social networks.

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Marketing Strategy, Ratings & Reviews, Social Commerce Summit, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker 2009 Summit Cliffnotes #4: Maximizing Impact from the Four Phases of Social Commerce

June 4th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

This series of blogs summarizes key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the 2009 Social Commerce Summit.

This post recaps my session from the 2009 Social Commerce Summit, “Maximizing Impact from the Four Phases of Social Commerce.”

It was Christmas 2004, and the “it”-toy of the year for my four-year-old son Kyle was a volcano racetrack playset.

The playset was nearly impossible to assemble. My father, Bert, went online to look for feedback from fellow purchasers, and found that the toy had a 1.5-star rating on the retailer’s website with very critical reviews. Bert wrote a similarly critical product review detailing our experience with assembly.

That’s when my family decided never to buy a product again without first researching customer reviews.

“Just say the word”

Reviewers want to enhance others’ experiences by sharing their own. These days, social networking technology amplifies the voice – and impact – of anyone with an opinion.

Successful social commerce follows a maturity cycle that repeats itself over and over again. Each phase offers unique opportunities for businesses to get ahead.

Phase 1: Find influencers

In a marketplace where everyone wields influencer potential, companies must dramatically change the way they market their brands. Forward-thinking businesses actively court customer opinions, knowing that the most effective quality assurance comes from the people ultimately using the products.

The best way to attract influencers is to offer multiple channels that empower them to make their voice heard. Bazaarvoice found a 29% overlap in customers utilizing Ask & Answer and Ratings & Reviews. This demonstrates the opportunity to tap into reviewers for answers, but also illustrates the opportunity to unearth new contributors with different channels.

Phase 2: Get contribution

Once you’ve provided a forum for customers to raise their hands, the next step is to encourage customers to contribute.

There are various ways to accomplish this goal. Bazaarvoice client Canadian Tire asked their customers for product usage tips. Bath and Body Works solicited reviews and Q&A feedback via email, on in-store receipts, and upon completion of online purchases.

Action chains are an important part of maximizing influencers’ voices. If a customer submits a review for a product, he or she is already engaged with the brand and is open to further contribution. Why not direct them to contribute again?

Thank you pages for review submission are a great way to link reviews to questions and answers. Bazaarvoice clients have found that their thank you pages linking to open questions about the reviewed product drive answer volume by 139 percent, making these pages a huge opportunity increase influencers’ impact.

Phase 3: Get more from contribution

User-generated content isn’t just useful for driving Web traffic and e-commerce. Utilize your customer’s input on all types of advertising, from in-store ads and kiosks to email promotions and mobile devices. Razorgator’s “101 Reasons to Buy Your Tickets from Razorgator” is aggregated entirely from their customers’ opinions.

In addition, user-generated content can help improve an organization on every level. Customer feedback offers an outsider’s perspective on your company’s sales, customer service, and marketing techniques. Companies have returned to the drawing board based on negative user feedback, notifying dissatisfied customers how their input helped improve the original product. This step improves customer trust, and proclaims the company’s dedication to excellence.

Phase 4: Get more from influencers

The final phase of the social commerce cycle presents brands with questions that direct them back to phase 1. How can you bring your offline reviewers online? How can you engage them in new and creative ways?

The online retailer continued to carry the faulty and highly criticized volcano racetrack playset for a year after our bad experience. Neither the manufacturer nor the retailer ever responded to Bert’s toy review. As a result, my father didn’t write another online review for four years. The retailer and manufacturer’s neglect of the customer voice lost them an influencer and an opportunity.

Learn from our story. Use your customers’ input to maximize your impact.Social Commerce Summit: Opening Remarks

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Marketing Strategy, User-Generated Content, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker UK Webinar: Selling Social to Your Boss

May 12th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

User-generated content and social site elements are the most-requested site features from customers, and some of the most successful brands online are already making great business cases for Soci76052852569438142al Commerce initiatives. But “Social” can seem difficult to measure and difficult to sell internally to senior management.

In our first UK Webinar of the year, you will hear real-world results and behind-the-scenes ways Social Commerce is championed internally – to great success. We’re thrilled to partner with B&Q, the largest home improvement and garden centre retailer in the UK and Europe and the third largest in the world.

Topics include:

  • What is Social Commerce?
  • How will “Social” benefit my business?
  • What ROI can I expect from my social initiatives?
  • How do I sell the benefits of Social Commerce internally?
  • How can I leverage user-generated content for e-commerce?

Join Bazaarvoice, ATG, and B&Q for this exclusive webinar event:

Thursday 21 May
12:00-13:00 UK Time

REGISTER HERE
Space is limited.

Learn from E-Commerce Leaders, including:

To learn more about this Webinar, visit: http://budurl.com/ee7v/.

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Marketing Strategy, MobileVoice, Ratings & Reviews, User-Generated Content, eCommerce

Greg Brown Putting Data to Work: Measuring the Impact of Merchandising Messaging on Your Web Site

March 17th, 2009 by Greg Brown Vice President of Retail and Travel, Americas

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking about the impact of merchandising messaging at the EzRez Thought Leadership Summit, held in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. With budgets being scrutinized today more than ever, it’s important that you not only measure your programs (your hypothesis), but continuously analyze and broadcast your results to help defend your budget (you don’t want to be the manager in the room that cannot defend your projects).

The focus of my presentation was on user-generated content (UGC), and how to measure social initiatives. As you are aware, Bazaarvoice provides social commerce solutions to a variety of organizations across many different industries. The hypothesis for engaging in social commerce is to get more visitors to the site, have them convert at a higher rate, spend more money, increase brand engagement, and return their products less frequently. But don’t stop there. It’s important to look beyond your hypothesis to determine the total impact of your assumptions (allowing you to both secure and defend your budget).

So where are the other areas of impact for UGC? Customer satisfaction is one. During his keynote at eTail in Phoenix last week, Larry Freed, President and CEO of Foresee Results, discussed the importance of measuring customer satisfaction. His hypothesis was that satisfaction drives conversion. This makes sense. Happy customers are more likely to buy your products. So how do you create a happy customer? By providing them the information they want, when they want it, and where they want it. According to Neilson Online, shoppers are demanding UGC as part of their shopping experience; 81 percent of online shoppers read online customer reviews over the holidays. If you give them the chance to read peer reviews, you have met their expectations. They will be happy. And, as Larry points out, if they are happy, they will be more likely to buy your products.

Let’s expand the hypothesis further. Are consumers in the store just as hungry for UGC as online shoppers? The answer is yes. The Web is a great mechanism for research and has a direct impact on in-store sales. According to BIGresearch, 92.5 percent of adults said they regularly or occasionally research products online before buying them in the store. Furthermore, eMarketer reports that for every $1 in online sales, the Internet influenced $3.45 of store sales.

So how do you marry the ease of research online and the demand for peer reviews with the comfort of purchasing in the store? Through mobile applications. Though in its infancy (according to ForeSee, only 29 percent of consumers have used their mobile device as part of their shopping experience), consumers are increasingly turning to their mobile phones to research products online while shopping in the store. ForeSee reports that 15 percent of surveyed shoppers used their mobile devices to go online to check product reviews. This is not insignificant, seeing that the number of smart phones is growing exponentially, and demand for UGC is over 80 percent. This is why Bazaarvoice recently launched MobileVoice; a solution that allows consumers to read peer reviews through their mobile devices.

But MobileVoice isn’t solely for the benefit of the consumer. As Joyce Hrinya, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Customer Service at Helzberg shared with me, Helzberg is excited to have their associates use MobileVoice in the store. The associate can share their expertise of a product and inject UGC from their mobile device to drive more sales for a better shopping experience, without the infrastructure costs associated with many POS terminals.

Helzberg is a great example of the proper way to continuously collect, measure, and analyze visitor behavioral data for the purpose of optimizing their business and their brand.

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Marketing Strategy, MobileVoice, Research, Social Commerce Summit, User-Generated Content, Word of Mouth, eCommerce

Brett Hurt Our Economy’s Slow Climb to Recovery and Social Commerce

February 15th, 2009 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO

BusinessWeek logoEvery week, I enjoy reading BusinessWeek and one of the highlights is James (Jim) Cooper’s weekly article on the economy.  When I initially started to read Jim’s article, many years ago, I had to struggle through it.  Even though I earned my MBA from Wharton, some of the concepts were difficult to understand and my “pattern recognition” took awhile to form.  I’m glad I stuck with it, as it has helped me understand business trends more quickly.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the consumer in this economy, given that consumers drive about 70% of our economy in the U.S. and a large share of the world’s economy (most notably China’s).  We are the world’s largest shopper.  This week’s article by Mr. Cooper really hit the nail on the head, leading me to believe that the recovery is going to take a lot longer than initially assumed.  This may be old news to some of you, but I have been consuming the data as it becomes available and seeing consumer saving increase so dramatically is a real turning point.

I believe that social commerce will shine in a gloomy time like this.  Consumers have always feared “buyer’s remorse“.  With U.S. unemployment at 7.6% and rising, in addition to the multi-trillion dollar decrease in consumer wealth, purchases will be scrutinized like never before.  And I believe customer ratings and reviews, as well as all forms of customer-generated content (and word of mouth), will be leveraged like never before.  From reducing returns to increasing sales, it is clear that social commerce reduces buyer’s remorse.  This isn’t just a U.S. trend, as the economic problems are global and buyer’s remorse is a common human behavior, and I believe this is the driver behind Sam’s recent post on UK consumers flocking to social commerce.

If you missed Sam’s post in November on Amazon, I recommend you read it.  They were one of the few retailers online that recently announced stellar results during such a challenging retail season.

Our clients have been stepping up their pace of innovation with social commerce.  You can see it reflected in our many blog posts in the last two months, especially the one from Heather about the unprecented number of holiday promotions we helped drive with our Community Managers.

This will be a huge year for social commerce.  Our company is signing clients at a faster pace than ever before.  Innovation is accelerating rapidly, and not just online.  The ROI is very proven.  And I’m proud of the way we are helping our clients in such a challenging time.

Come join us from April 27-29th in Austin at our Social Commerce Summit to discuss how the best are leveraging social commerce.  We sincerely look forward to seeing you there.

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