Social media, BigData and Effort-Return

The classic  question we ask about marketing, or really any form of outreach, is given the effort I expend, what is my return. This Effort-Return question is at the heart of ROI, value proposition and the general, down-to-earth question of “Was it worth it?”

That’s the essential question my clients have always asked me and I think that’s a big question that is being formed around the entire area of social media and BigData. Its clear that social media is here to stay. The idea that “people like us” create our own content is very powerful. It gives us voice, it gives us a communication platform and it gives us, essentially, power. The power of the consumer voice is amplified.

Instead of 10 people hearing us when we are upset at something, we can have 1,000,00 hear us. That’s power. And the cost of “hearing” the content, of finding it, is dropping dramatically. It is still not free to access content, you still have enormous search costs (we really need contextual search–searching those resources most relevant to me instead of searching the world). But search costs are dropping, navigation costs are dropping. Every year, those 1,000,000 can listen and filter another 1,000,000 messages.

BigData has come our rescue…in a way. It gives more tools to the programmers who want to shape that search data, who want to help us listen and reach out. There’s alot of hype out there and the technology is moving very fast, so fast, that new projects, new frameworks and new approaches are popping out every day.

But is it worth the effort? If so, just how much is it worth it? That’s still a key question. The amount of innovation in this area is tremendous and its not unlike the innovation I see occurring in the healthcare space. Everyone is trying something which means that everything is being tried somewhere.

That’s good. But it pretty clear already that while we can now communicate in many new channels unavailable 5 years ago, we can communicate easier, more frequently and find things that interest us, does it really pay-off? Do companies benefit by investing now and trying to get ahead or do they just try to keep pace and meet some, but not all, customer expectations. Will entire companies fall because of social media and BigData?

Those are hard questions to answer, but I think we can look at other patterns out there and see that even with all the hype today, it will be worth it. Companies should invest. But many should not over invest. When the internet was first widely used, it was thought that it would change the world. Well, it did. It just too 2 decades to do that instead of the few years that futurists predicted. But with a higher density of connectivity today, innovations can roll out faster.

But I think that’s where the answer is. If you are in the business of social, then being on that wave and pushing the edge is good. If your business is BigData tools and technologies, then yes, you need to invest and recognize that it will be worth it in the long run if you survive. But many brands (companies) can just strive to keep pace and do okay. There are exceptions of course. Product quality and features still dominate purchase decisions. Yes people are moved by viral videos and bad customer service or bad products, but companies with long-standing brands whose products are core, can afford to spend to meet expectations versus having to over invest. They will do just fine keeping pace and continuing to focus on the product as well as marketing. For example, does Coca-Cola expect to double market share because they are better at social media than others? Will they grow significantly because of it? Its not clear but for some segment of products, the spending pattern does not have to be extraordinary. It just needs to keep pace and be reasonable.

This gets us back to the question of social media, BigData and Effort-Return. Effort-Return is important to calculate because brands should not over invest. They need to manage their investments. Is social media and BigData worth the investment? Absolutely, its really a question of degree.

Leave a Reply