Kleiner: How to develop "social identity" marketing strategy in e-commerce

November 28, 2011 Irene Lee, a partner at the venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield&byers (Kleiner), published an article in Aileen, a well-known science and technology blog, introducing the "social identity" effect (TechCrunch Proof) and strategy. Irene Lee's investment focus is on consumer internet companies, and some of the companies mentioned below have been given Kleiner ventures, such as one Kings Lane and Plum District, a board member of the two companies. The following is a full text summary:

We are in the "consumer Internet" a high-speed development period: Despite the great economic environment, but many web companies are growing at a high speed. The situation has reminded many of the days when companies such as Amazon, Netscape, EBay, Yahoo, Google and PayPal were created more than 10 years ago.

These companies face an not-so-new challenge – to compete for consumer attention. If you want to expand your user base, you might want to know if there is a best, most cost-effective way to attract valuable users. I am increasingly convinced that the best approach is to use a concept called "social identity" to carry out marketing campaigns. In the social web age, "social identity" is still a relatively unexplored gold mine.

What is social identity? In short, it is a positive impact when someone discovers that people are doing something. It is also known as "Social Information impact" (informational social influence).

Wikipedia's interpretation of "social identity" is "a psychological phenomenon in which people assume that the behavior of others reflects the correct behavior in a given situation ... The assumption is that the people around you have more information about the situation. In other words, "social identity" means that people have a kind of learning about others ' behavior, and this could be one of the big drivers of consumer behavior.

Imagine a scene where some people line up behind a velvet rope and wait to enter a club. This makes most people who pass by want to know why the club is so expected. And Gmail, Gilt Groupe, Spotify, and Turntable.fm, when they were originally launched, were the equivalent of a digital version of a velvet partition rope, which helped them gain viral growth (viral substituting, Refers to the growth of the way users are propagated to users.

In this regard, Professor Robert Cialdini, a social psychology thinker, provided a cialdini of examples. In one study, his team tested various tips on the effect of repeated towels being used by hotel tenants. A hint of social identity-"nearly 75% of all other guests use the same towel more than once"-25% better than all other messages. If you add "other guests who have lived in this room", the results will be even better.

In another study, the sale of this dish was 13-20% by a restaurant that simply emphasized "this is our most popular dish." Social identity also applies to your subconscious, which is why many comedy programs often add laughter to the tracks: Viewers laugh more when they hear other people laughing.

Five types of social identity

If you have a digital start-up, the best way to get new users to know you is to nurture and emphasise your social identity. Making your product socially acceptable through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google +, TUMBLR, YouTube, and Pinterest not only multiplies your chances of discovering your product, but it also enhances the impact of these products. You can think of it as laying the groundwork for a mass spread of word-of-mouth. The following is an introduction to the classification of social identity and how smart digital companies measure their impact.

1 expert social identity-from a reliable expert, such as from a magazine or a blogger to get recommendations and presentations, can have an incredibly large impact. For example:

· On the runway of the senior fashion apparel rental website rent, those visitors who are promoted by fashion magazines or bloggers are 200% more efficient than paid search visitors.

· Klout is a service that can identify topic experts on the social web. It has invited 217 Klout high points of design, fashion, High-tech and car "influential people" test drive new Audi A8. These are the 3,500 Twitter messages that have been relayed to 3.1 million people in less than 30 days-a multiplier effect of more than 14,000 times times.

· For mom's group buying website Plum District (Note: Plum District is equivalent to Groupon and direct sales business of the United States Kay Lin, it is to master the family financial life and death of the mother, The establishment of less than a year has been the financing of 10.6 million of dollars) also used Klout scored high "influence mom." These "influence moms" referrals bring customers twice times as many customers as other marketing channels.

2 Celebrity social identity – up to 25% TV commercials in the United States take advantage of the influence of celebrities, but so far only a handful of internet start-ups have adopted celebrity endorsement practices. Some examples:

· Priceline.com became one of the first web companies to use celebrity endorsement in 1997. Shatner, William Shatner, acted as captain of the Enterprise in the American TV series Star Trek: The First generation and its seven derivative films. T. Kirk's role is not a travel expert, but his endorsement focuses on helping consumers save money. The move has been a great success. Priceline's current market capitalisation is about $23 billion trillion, and Chatenade's shares are now worth about 600 million dollars.

· Turkey's fastest-growing fashion E-commerce company Trendyol regularly launches celebrity endorsement campaigns. This has increased its web site traffic by 1.5 times times, and its product sales have increased by 30%.

· ShoeDazzle's lead designer is celebrity Kardashian (Kim Kardashian). With her help, the company achieved sales of $25 million in 2010, increased to 70 million dollars in 2011 and recently raised 40 million dollars. Celebrity Simpson (Jessica Simpson) and Beauty man Lleida Joey (Nerida Joy) recently helped the Beautymint website attract 500,000 visitors in the first 24 hours of its launch.

· The most "authentic" (and most cost effective) celebrity social identity is free. 2010, star Paltrow (Gwyneth Paltrow) in its blog Goop free mention of home decoration site One Kings Lane, so that the site's registration increased by 90% (compared with the average number of previous 4 days). The viral hype caused by the music celebrity Sir Mix-a-lot The Turntable.fm's active users to 140,000 in just 4 weeks.

3 User Social identity--the marketing staff in the TV direct selling program are good at sharing the successful cases of users. Digital companies that have mastered this technique include:

· More than 61 million people on Yelp read user reviews each month (the company is going public). The company's evaluations have had a very small impact on their revenues. A recent study by Harvard Business School showed that a 1-star rating on Yelp would lead to 5-9% sales growth.

· User generated videos (UGV, user-generated Video) is an important social identity phenomenon. ShoeDazzle's early visitors saw an average of 9 UGV, which contributed to the company's rapid growth in sales. UGV on YouTube brings a 3 times-fold conversion rate for beachbody (relative to the average visitor).

· It is also important to track negative user social identity effects. The first negative user comment on ebay dropped the seller's weekly growth rate from 5% to 8%, and a negative record of 1% per cent would lead to a 7.5% drop in sales.

4 The wisdom of social identity of the crowd-"father of McDonald's" Kroc (Ray Kroc) began to use the social identity effect in 1955. He has "served 1 million customers" in McDonald's, highlighting the popularity of McDonald's and the large number of customers it has, implying that "1 million people are not mistaken." Here are some examples of web companies:

· Fashion electronics retailer ModCloth used a "become buyer" (be the Buyer) medal, allowing users to vote for products they believe ModCloth should be sold in the future. This has a big impact on shoppers: the "become buyer" medals are sold at speeds that are twice times as fast as those without the medals.

· Callaway Digital Arts found that when children's ipad apps were promoted to the top 10 of the itunes App Store's popularity list, they downloaded 10 times times a day from the previous week. and become the "most popular application" the first place than the second to obtain more than the download volume 30–50%.

· Opower, a green technology company, cleverly uses the social identity effect to reduce power consumption. The practice is that Opower compares a household's electricity consumption to their neighbourhood in a marketing email, and receives a 80% response rate. So far, the practice has driven users to save 500 million of degrees of electricity.

5 The wisdom of a friend's social identity--from its 1:1 influence and the potential for viral growth--"sample learning" with social web friends may be a "killer app" for social identity. Some examples:

· The use of "friend-inviting friends" on Facebook and other social networks has helped Zynga grow from 3 million to 41 million per day in just a year (from 2008 to 2009).

· It can be said that the most valuable people on the social web are mothers, who rely heavily on advice from friends and family. Recent BabyCenter studies have shown that moms are 67% more reliant on their friends than other shoppers, and they are 243% more reliant on social media than the average crowd.

· It's better to introduce customers through friends. They spend more (on one Kings Lane, their lifetime value is twice times that of all customers who come through other channels); The conversion rate is higher (75% of the conversion rate on the rent the runway is higher than that of customers coming through other channels) ; faster shopping (on Trendyol, the first purchase they make after registering is one times faster than customers who come through other channels)

· They are also better contributors to content. People who see content on TripAdvisor from friends are twice times more content contributors than others, and 20% more involved than other users.

Develop your social identity strategy

Will there be some sort of social identity that works best for your company? Maybe, but companies like LegalZoom have found that a mix of social-identity methods is the most effective. The beauty of the Web is that you can quickly test, learn, and iterate to find the most effective way.

Note that if you do not develop a good product that attracts customers, so that people like it enough to recommend it to others, then there may not be a social identity strategy that works. How do you know you have a good product? You can track the growth of organic traffic, review, rating and reuse rates, and measure your viral coefficients (if your site has a sharing feature). What percentage of your visitors and users share information with others each day? How does your product's good reputation share with the outside? Do you know your NET Recommendation score (NET promoter Score) and your Klout score?

In the social web age, social identity is a new way of marketing. If you have an excellent product to wait for the user to discover, you need to know how to create a social identity effect for it, push it to the right "influencers" and let them share its message. Social identity is the best way to let new users know about your product, and to convince older users that they have made the right choice.

Attachment: Another psychological phenomenon Fomo (fear of Missing out), that is, "lest Miss", is also a form of social identity. People will not only have the kind of learning, but also want to get what is in short supply. FOMO is a great boost to shopping decisions, as evidenced by the rise of the "flash sales" service.

Source: http://www.199it.com/archives/19045.html