Mediaboss Marketing

Marketing in social media is moving away from counting the number of likes and fans to using technology to drive commerce

Its Heather Taylor, Social@Ogilvy's Head of Content and Strategy who deserves credit for this crisp and say-it-all title. But its not just Taylor. At the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit that concluded recently in Salt Lake City, Utah, it looked like almost the entire world was talking about the monetisation of social media.

At the summit, a gathering of more than 6,000 professionals from over 33 countries, nearly all conversations around digital marketing veered towards how digital media could be used for monetisation. Umang Bedi, Managing Director, South Asia, Adobe Systems, says most marketers are moving beyond making and managing content to measuring and monetising. Globally, most brands, from fashion retailer Guess to hospitality brand MGM resorts to automobile giant Audi to food retailer Dunkin Donuts and beauty retail brand Ulta are all speaking the same language. Still measuring return on investment (ROI) on social media might not get you the same answer from everyone whos trying to do it. Even some of the measurement metrics are still too fluffy. But theres no denying that the medium is certainly evolving.

In India too brands from the hospitality, telecom and e-tailing sectors are fine-tuning and honing their digital strategies. But its still early days in India, says Bedi, whose company works closely with marketers in sectors that are going digital with a vengeance.

cat.a.lyst brings you global cases from the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2014 of companies using social media to make critical marketing decisions.

Square Up

Social networking site Foursquare has gone way beyond the check-ins and the badges, says Dev Anand who looks after Business Development at Foursquare.

The accent, according to Anand, is on using intelligent local recommendations for local search and social discovery, and help users save money by finding great deals. Special offers makes up 25 per cent of business, he says.

Foursquare, which is in its fifth year of operations, has seen a fair bit of evolution. The first two years of Foursquare was just about broadcasting the users location to friends. Then the site launched its local recommendation service, thus pushing data into its users pockets, making them go where they have not been before.

Now the site is using check-ins (users typically disclose their current location to friends by check-ins on Foursquare) to help companies take sound business decisions. Check-ins are taking place is a good proxy for economic activity, says Anand whose site has seen as many as five billion check-ins from 45 million users globally in the last five years.

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From conversations to conversions