How Do We Measure Success of a Marketing Campaign of Consumer Software Product such as ISS r6?

I was reading an article on McKinsey Quarterly on Web 2.0 and was thinking about how to apply what I read to what I do. The following is an attempt towards that.

Problem Statement

Internet has evolved into the primary vehicle for communication, information, and commerce.

However, today’s online customers ferociously guard their online experiences. And for good reasons.

What does this mean for HCL and CA ISBU? In effect, customers are doing things that marketing managers don’t necessarily want—or expect—them to do. For example, they can easily connect with one another through any one of the plethora of social networking sites and satisfy their need for information about ISS r6 that has been recently introduced to the market. What’s more, consumers may trust information obtained in this way much more than they do information from either HCL or CA ISBU. How do we then measure whether a marketing exercise is successful or not in this scenario? Do we just rely on selling these products next to free and hope that those consumers will renew next year? Or are their some follow up activities that can be done to gauge the success?

What adds to this problem is another dimension – consumers of CA products in the Home and Home Office segment renew at a rate of 15% to 18%. This means that 85% - 88% of the original buyers have gone elsewhere. Under the present circumstances, neither do we know for sure where they have migrated, nor do we know for sure the reasons for such migration. We just HOPE that they return to us next year, and we all know that hope is not a good strategy.

There are 4 things that we may like to do in this case.

Listen

We need to evolve a formal process to monitor and analyze what our customers are saying about it online and then use this information as an early-warning system. Even casual observation of these online conversations is better than nothing. Indeed, customers are probably already talking about HCL and CA ISBU and our products on sites such as Facebook or Kaboodle, whether or not we’ve set up pages there. They might also be using microblogging platforms such as Twitter to broadcast their latest feelings about using ISS r6 and services that we offer.

We might like to get some metrics through Nielsen Online, with their BuzzMetrics services. This division specializes in analyzing this online chatter.

But simply entering the game is only a start. We should always assume that the digital environment will change rapidly—so we must adapt accordingly. Rather than pushing messages at consumers through mass mailers and phone campaigns, we should listen to them and think constantly about ways to engage with them actively. Neglecting this might lead to disastrous effects, and with web speed, all destruction can happen over one single weekend!

Engage and Collaborate

Now that we have a metric to measure consumer behavior, what do we do next?

Engage newly empowered customers by using the novel tools of Web 2.0 and beyond. Start with simple pilots: for example, create a company profile on social-networking sites, such as Ning, or sponsor a promotion on the innovative social-shopping site Polyvore. Make friends with bloggers and tweet your customers on Twitter. Kimberly-Clark, for instance, used its Huggies “Baby Countdown” widget to engage its customers on their computer desktops. Smirnoff used the viral-video marketing vehicle Tea Partay to promote its Raw Tea product. The campaign was a hit on YouTube.

The obvious question now to ask is – what is the ROI of such investments? While measurement of ROI for social media is still in the early stages, these experiments might clearly pay off big time in greater customer awareness and brand engagement. Unless we have Web 2.0 experts on our team, stick with small experiments, since big ones can fail badly. For example, create a HCL / CA ISBU-controlled community, perhaps through a blog, that gives our customers a place to offer feedback about ISS r6 and services. Also, take the first steps toward co-creation: engage our customers through collaborative efforts that conceive new offerings and ad campaigns, as Frito Lay did with its innovative customer-created ads campaigns “Crash the Super Bowl,” “Fight for the Flavor,” and “The Quest.” Remember, though, that there really might not be any best practices or established business models yet. For now, we just need to get some experience and some measurement of consumer behavior—and quickly.

Apply

Next, take the results of the above experiments and apply them. To make it easier to reach out to customers, optimize our web site so that it connects fluidly with online communities and social-media sites. Make it simple for consumers to link to you and tag your content, and find ways to make your site more relevant in social-networking searches. Measuring impact is paramount, so we’ll need to use some predictive tools and quantitative analysis to track the results of our experiments. And as we gain experience, we can apply what we learn on a larger scale.

Develop

The Internet is a social medium and should therefore be a crucial part of HCL and CA’s marketing mix. But it is critical to develop integrated marketing programs that use the Web as more than just another advertising channel. We must therefore rapidly flee from the mass-media broadcast mentality: for example, we should make interactive Web 2.0 elements part of our marketing programs.

Bottom line: by focusing on the fundamental aspects of the consumers’ online behavior— not just current best practices—both HCL and CA ISBU will be better prepared on product strategies and revenue planning as compared to HOPE.