Geoffrey Moore (The Chasm Group Advisors – TCG Advisors) is the renowned technology author of such books as “Crossing the Chasm” and “Inside the Tornado”. Moore presented this slide and focused his keynote presentation in the Sales 2.0 show (October 2008) on how Social Networking will become the most cost effective method for marketing to SMBs.

His thesis was a grocery model had been used for selling high volume and low priced products to consumers and field sales rep model had been used for selling large dollar deals to enterprises. Social Networking would bridge the gap.

By 2010, more than 60 percent of Fortune 1,000 companies with a Web site will connect to or host some form of online community that can be utilized for customer relationship purposes.

“A key benefit of establishing a community is the amount of information an organization can gain about its customer base, which can be used for short-and long-term customer relationships,” said Adam Sarner, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Data can be collected and used for product development, customer feedback, loyalty management, customer segmentation, campaign targeting, and individual or group customer satisfaction management. This wealth of data can be used for marketing, in particular, as well as an entire customer-focused organization.” http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=770914

Additional information on social computing and CRM is in the Gartner report “The Business Impact of Social Computing on Marketing and ‘Generation Virtual’.” The report is on Gartner’s Web site
athttp://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=750734&subref=simplesearch.

Forrester: Spend on Social Media to Leave Other Channels in the Dust

By Pat Speer April 27, 2009

The idea of social networks used for commerce is gaining headwind, and in the next two years may become more powerful than corporate Web sites and customer relationship management software, according to Forrester.

This means the spend by insurers and other financial services organizations on social media in the U.S. will contribute to an increase from $716 million this year to more than $3.1 billion in 2014, a 34% compound annual growth rate, according to a Forrester forecast report.

The report, released last week at the Forrester Research Marketing Forum in Orlando, notes that social media spending will grow faster than spending on other interactive marketing channels, which will grow at a 17% CAGR. “For consumer-facing companies, that means tapping into consumers’ increasing expectation that they will participate with your brand. For b-to-b firms, it means leveraging the power of innovative customers who are increasingly engaging with their peers to solve their problems,” Christine Overby, Forrester Research VP-research director, said in a statement.

Jeremiah Owyang, author of the report, says that although the current social networking experience is disjointed because consumers have different identities on each site they visit, technology will solve this dilemma with uniform IDs. Owyang maintains uniform IDs are on the horizon, thanks to technologies such as OpenID, and the technology will help transform marketing, e-commerce, CRM and advertising.

State Farm seems to understand the social commerce future. Us Weekly confirms having sold sponsorship of its Facebook page news tab to the Bloomington, Ill., insurer. And, as reported on Biz Report’s Web site, according to Steven Schwartz, chief digital officer at Us Weekly’s parent, Wenner Media, this is not necessarily a one-off deal. “We do anticipate that this becomes another tool in our tool chest, among meaningful ways to let brands reach our audience in a very credible, differentiated environment,” he told Biz Report.

http://www.insurancenetworking.com/news/-12238-1.html

We have prepared the following document in response to Enfatico’s request for assistance with respect to social media research and initiatives for Dell.

We compiled information from multiple sources gathered through various events, conference and whitepapers.

In general the research suggests the following:

• Social Networks and social media will grow substantially as driver of ecommerce revenue and direct response.
• Business Owners use and are increasingly using social networking for business promotion, lead generation and revenue related activities.
• It works. A number of surveys and white papers suggest that SMBs are finding success in the business social networking activities.

Included in this document are Canadian statistics from the month of May 2009 for SaleSpider.com.

We tried to streamline the overwhelming amount of data available.

More information or pinpointed statistics for Dell research are available upon request.