IVR Deconstructed

The technological revolution has affected every aspect of business, especially the marketing process. Potential customers are more accessible then ever, and companies can connect to their clients easily and accessibly with merely a click of a button.

With this heightened connectivity comes a new and unique set of challenges for companies attempting to pitch their product or service by utilizing social marketing.  While this type of connectivity enables heightened user interaction, it can also lead to overexposure and consumers who have to process a large amount of information in a short amount of time.

How can companies tailor their social media marketing strategy to engage their customers without bombarding them?

First, a brief history on social networking, per Mashable.  The first email transmission was exchanged between two computers that were sitting side by side in 1971.

AOL instant messenger was launched in 1997 allowing people to communicate globally via their computers utilizing an Internet connection.

In 2002 Friendster was launched, which was the first website that allowed people to make online connections with their real-life friends.

Shortly after the highly successful launch of Friendster, MySpace was established.  MySpace replicated the Friendster model, and was launched with the intention of being an additional social network.  After the successful launch of both companies, there was a barrage of social network created that catered to people with different interests, affiliations, and demographics.

Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook in 2004.  The site was originally intended to act as a social network exclusively for college students.  At it’s inception, users had to have a college e-mail address to even sign up for Facebook.  Two years later, Twitter was introduced and was a combination of a social networking site and an instant messaging program.  Users on Twitter have 140 characters in which to express their thoughts and share links.

In 2008, Facebook overtook MySpace as the largest social network.  As Facebook grew, it became less and less exclusive, ultimately allowing anyone with an email address to join.  As it stands, Facebook as 600 million users, Twitter has 190 million, Myspace has 260 million, and Friendster (the original social network) only has 90 million.

As it stands, social networking is one of the most successful communication mediums available.  Marketing and advertising departments, regardless of what products they represent, must integrate social media into their advertising strategy.  All of these networks are free to users, but the breadth of information constantly being updated on them means that users may miss vital information.

Marketing and advertising departments could utilize an IVR system in order to give their customers the most optimal experience possible.  Users may simply call in from any phone anywhere and have status updates, tweets, friend requests, and messages read to them.  In fact, it is possible to integrate the Facebook and Twitter APIs with Plum’s VoiceXML platforms to enable this type of capability!

Manhattan ad agency Droga5 head David Droga to CNN recently:

“You can’t really set out to make a viral, you just want to make great content that people engage in. It’s really an impossible formula to crack because you’re competing with some guy who is putting a cat down his pants on YouTube.”

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Viral marketing has exploded in the last few years as we’ve turned more and more to the Internet.

It started as viral videos of the doped-up kid after the dentist appointment, the surprise kitty and all the others. But now it’s big-brand corporations throwing millions at ads, trying to create that elusive viral video that blows up.

According to CNN, viral advertising campaigns in the U.S. grew 180 percent from 2009 to 2010. Companies will spend $2 billion in 2011 and up to about $6 billion in 2014.

UK-based viral marketing firm Lightning Bug says “online marketing has a greater effect on brand engagement than any other advertising medium.”

According to Lightning Bug, online ads accounted for 15 percent of all ad budgets in the UK in 2007. Online ad spending rose from £800 million in 2003 to  £2.8 billion in 2007.

But what about the viral videos? I mean, how do you succeed at them? Well, a lot of experts think you need to get influential people to watch them. But before that, you need something to catch people’s attention. How do you do that? According to Droga, it’s impossible to know.

I do know this, though…it doesn’t really matter what you’re selling or what your viral video is about, as long as you get brand attention.

Check this one out…it’s a meerkat named Aleksandr Orlov who just happens to have a million followers on Twitter. What’s he selling? It doesn’t matter. Check it out…

Contemporary marketing philosophy includes several different types of marketing that are based on what type of customer engagement a company is seeking to establish, or what demographic they are seeking to target.

Generally, there are four types of marketing companies can engage in.  According to Wikipedia, these types are: relationship marketing, business marketing, social marketing, and branding.  Relationship and business marketing and management focus on the types of customers the sales and advertising teams will communicate with.  Building and maintaining productive business relationships is a vital component of the marketing and sales process, and there are several different ways in which customers can focus on business retention.

Relationship marketing and management primarily focuses on developing and sustaining mutually positive customer relationships.  The focus of this type of relationship marketing is primarily customer service, with suppliers attempting to give customers the best possible working experience.  In this type of marketing sales transactions are deemphasized, while the spotlight is primarily placed on preserving the customer relationship.

The main focus of relationship marketing is simultaneously ensuring both customer satisfaction and retention.  Relationship marketing can be highly effective, especially when companies utilize interactive voice response systems to answer customer calls.  Good customer service involves promptly and accurately addressing any and all client inquiries.  Often times, this requires a massive staff of non-revenue generating individuals ready to take a phone call a moment’s notice.

An IVR system can answer phone calls, answer simple customer inquiries, route calls to the proper location, and even record messages, comments, and feedback.  This could eliminate the need for businesses to retain huge customer service staffs while still engaging in the type and level of relationship marketing that their customers require.

Business marketing pertains to organizations that facilitate the sale of their products to other organizations that act as third-party resellers.  This type of business-to-business marketing ensures that a retailer’s product is sold, but they are not directly responsible for the sale, maintenance, or servicing of their product.

This type of marketing takes place between two businesses who are potentially interested in entering in to a mutually profitable partnership.  This type of marketing is different in that marketing teams have to appeal to the company’s business and finance departments, as opposed to catering to their customer service base.

An IVR can be set up to record conference calls, to connect various departments to each other, to answer B2B questions, and even to test out the potential product.

It’s not surprising that news of Facebook going public has spawned discussion about the website’s value in the future.

In my opinion, it’s impossible to judge its value down the road because we don’t even know what it’s going to be. Or what it is right now, for that matter. It isn’t and won’t be just a social network—it started that way, but it’s changed.  (Read What Is Facebook? to see what I mean.)

Today, CNN has a headline story about why some users are leaving Facebook. There’s a lot of reasons, including a mother wanting her kids to actually call her instead of checking in on Facebook—a valid issue. (Here’s the article: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/06/20/people.shunning.facebook/index.html?hpt=hp_c1.)

There was also the story a while back about high school football prospect C.J. Johnson leaving Facebook because he was getting harassed about what college he committed to. I can understand his leaving. There’s been other stories like his, too.

And C.J. and the mother aren’t the only ones. While Facebook is still making huge gains worldwide, it’s slumping somewhat at home. The Washington Examiner recently reported that the site lost nearly six million users last month.

I mean, it’s not like Mark Zuckerberg is worried, though. Or maybe he is, actually, I don’t know. Regardless, the company is set to go public in an astronomical $100 billion offering in the first quarter of next year.

Just over the last couple years, Facebook has gone from 150 million users to 500 million. It looks like a lot of those new users are coming from areas of the world either just discovering the site or even just getting Internet access.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens when there are no new users to recruit. It’ll be a while yet I’m sure.

And, like I said before, Facebook will probably be something totally different by the time the site runs out of new user markets or demographics. There’ll always be new users coming of age, but there are only so many places in the world with a small percentage of computers or Internet.

Anyway, we’ll see.

Here’s my question—

What’s Facebook gonna do with all that money?

As I’m sure you’ve heard, preliminary valuations for Facebook’s I.P.O. are at $100 billion. $100 billion. And they’re gonna do what with all that money?

Actually, let’s start with the valuation (there’s so much to talk about with this Facebook I.P.O., but let’s start there). LinkedIn tested the waters for social networking public offerings last month, and I’m sure their offering is influencing how people are viewing Facebook’s.

LinkedIn made $240 million in revenues last year. The company went public at 17 times that mark, way above other tech companies (Google, for one—Google is valued at six times its revenues). There was talk, inevitably, that the numbers were inflated.

Well, here’s what LinkedIn has done in the month since the public offering…fallen. The stock started at $94 a share, and now it’s at $67 a share. It’s very early, but still.

Compare that to what Google has done. Google started at $106, hit a high of $714 in 2007 right before the financial crisis and is at $500 right now.

According to some sources, Facebook’s revenues are at about $1 billion a year. We don’t know that for certain because it’s a private company and doesn’t have to divulge all its numbers.

Congress is talking about passing legislation that will force private companies to be more open with their books, which could affect how people view Facebook’s public offering. But we don’t know if Congress will actually pass the legislation or pass it before Facebook goes public, which could be first quarter 2012.

In any case, Facebook’s valuation is at $100 billion at the moment. That’s 100 times its revenues. If 17 times revenues is inflated, what’s 100 times?

Is this Tech Bubble 2.0? Lots of people are writing that it is. I certainly hope it’s not. I mean, while Facebook is still gaining users every year (the site went from 150 million users to 500 million in the last two years), it’s also starting to lose them.

Most of the site’s new users are just discovering it. Meanwhile, longtime users are starting to leave. According to the Washington Examiner, almost six million Facebook users deactivated their accounts last month alone.

It’s kinda hard not to be a little worried about a bubble if Facebook is peaking, especially when you consider how many other companies are included in the Facebook Ecosystem.

Plenty of companies survive solely on Facebook, and nearly every company out there has shifted a good chunk of its marketing and advertising budget towards Facebook. According to InsideFacebook.com, companies making social games for the Facebook Platform made $100s of millions in 2010. Social game developers alone.

But back to the initial question…What’s Zuckerberg and Co. gonna do with $100 billion?

Will they follow in Google’s footsteps and put their hands into pretty much everything? These days, Google is into cell phones, TVs, desktop software, ebooks…so on and so on.

Will Facebook try to make a run on Silicon Valley’s developer talent? I mean, there’s already a war going on between the two. According to TechCrunch, Facebook has won away well over 100 former Google employees. Google has handed out 20-percent raises left and right and given stock options of up to $500,000 in value.

So is this the Talent Bubble then? How much are these employees actually worth?

For that matter (and a much more important question): How much are these companies really worth? Pandora just went public for about 19 times its 2010 sales, although the company has never made a profit.

And what’s happened to Pandora stock in the last three days? It’s fallen. It hit a high of $24.25 on Wednesday (the day it went public) and is already down to $12.80.

So these are just some of my questions regarding Facebook’s public offering.