Dell Defines Social Media ROI: An Interview With Rishi Dave Harry Gold | September 13, 2011

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Rishi Dave, executive director of online marketing for Dell’s Public and Large Enterprise Business Unit. In this two-part column, you can get some insights on tech and B2B social media marketing. Please click here to see part one for the first half of the interview. Here is some more wisdom from Rishi:

HG: How do you encourage people to engage in actions that benefit Dell (follow, fan, share, click, buy, etc.)? Can you give specific examples?

RD: Sure:

1. Incenting employees to create content is one thing: you can put hard metrics in their performance plans or propose a little friendly competition and the promise of something appealing. But incenting people outside your company can be a challenge. This requires companies to build brand loyalty – something Dell accomplished with its creation of CAP days. Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel (CAP days) takes some of Dell’s greatest supporters, as well as some of Dell’s biggest critics, and brings them together to hash out what’s working, what people like, and what they think Dell must improve upon. This breeds brand loyalty that goes far beyond a simple “like” or “share.” While we realize this is a large-scale project and that not every company is capable of constructing something similar, the underlying goal can still be accomplished in much smaller ways.
2. Providing great thought leadership content on a regular and highly frequent basis encourages people to connect with us to get access to the content in their streams. Our Enterprise Efficiency and Tech Center communities do a great job of keeping customers engaged with great content.

HG: How do you think social media marketing drives revenue or saves money for Dell? Can you give specific examples?

RD:Sure, here are a few:

1. A McKinsey study recently found that 69 percent of surveyed companies gained measureable business benefits from social media, including product innovation, more effective marketing spend, lower cost, and higher revenues.
2. Social media drives people to our purchase process on our website. Social content on our website increases the number of people who convert to revenue.
3. Online customer support and communities reduces the number of people calling into our call centers.
4. B2B communities allow people to get access to experts to push them down the purchase funnel.

HG: How do you measure the success of your social media marketing – what are some of your main metrics/KPIs? Can you give specific examples?

RD:The whole point of your social media efforts is to address pragmatically fundamental business goals. You need quantifiable insight into how online engagement with customers can improve the key value drivers of your business.

1. We look at the links between customer behavior in social media and revenue both off and online (which I mentioned earlier).
2. We also look at the impact on costs (in customer support, for example), loyalty, product innovation (by incorporating social feedback in product roadmaps), and brand reputation.
3. One relevant metric is the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures the loyalty of your customer base and lets you identify opportunities for increasing your overall brand health. It also enables you [Read the rest here]