Digital Marketing Blog

Social media marketing is all about customer engagement, building relationships, earning trust, developing influence and managing reputation. At its core are interaction and conversation.

Social media integration has been an important aspect of recent client projects in terms of both the integration of digital marketing activity and integration within business culture and processes. Prompted by this, I thought it would be interesting to conduct some research into the level of social media integration being achieved more generally by businesses in the UK.

To be meaningful as a general barometer of social media integration (at least as far as visible digital marketing activity is concerned), the research needed to look at a sample of businesses of all sizes, with diverse products and services, and which represented a wide range of customer demographics.

The Carole Nash Motorcycle Live 2010 show, taking place at the NEC later this month, provided the perfect opportunity. There are a number of things that make it a good candidate for being the basis of the research:

• When it comes to interaction and conversation, what better real-world example than a nine day international exhibition that’s expected to attract over 140,000 visitors?
• Over 200 businesses are booked to exhibit, ranging from big brands like Yamaha, Ducati and Triumph to small independent retailers, charities and motorcycle tour operators. The vast majority are UK-based, with a few from the USA and Europe.
• According to research published by the Motorcycle Industry Association, there are around 1.5 million motorcyclists in the UK and the number of licensed bikes has doubled in the last 15 years or so. The UK motorcycle industry generates £5.2 billion in sales per year and employs around 65,500 people in more than 6,350 businesses. So it’s a niche sector, but certainly not a small one.
• The demographic profile of UK motorcyclists is very broad. Although 85% are male and 46% are between 35 and 50 years old, bikers range in age from 16 to over 90, come from all walks of life and represent every level of income. Their riding interests vary considerably too, from the daily commute or weekend blast to racing and round the world tours.
• The nature of motorcycling (and those who ride) make it highly social both in real life and online. The biking community has many long-established rallies and bike clubs, as well as an array of online discussion forums and other social media outlets.
• Familiarity is a factor too. As a biker myself, and with a number of clients involved in the motorcycle industry, I understand the context of the brands being researched from the perspective of both consumer and “insider”.

The show itself provides a good example of social media integration with an active Facebook page, Twitter account and YouTube channel.

Scope of Research

Looking at 202 of the Motorcycle Live exhibitors, the research focused on the visible level of social media integration each had achieved with their website. Data was collected about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and RSS integration, as well as the use of content sharing tools such as AddThis.

Although not strictly related to social media integration, for the sake of completeness the research also noted whether or not each site had been subject to any on-page SEO and if they were using a web analytics solution to monitor performance.

The Motorcycle Live exhibitor list was the starting point for the study. Quite intentionally, the research did not attempt to track down accounts on social platforms if the exhibitors’ sites didn’t mention them.

Basic Promotion

Before moving on to the findings related to social media integration, it’s worth highlighting the degree to which exhibitors made use of the basic promotional opportunities offered by the Motorcycle Live website.

• 5% hadn’t listed any company information or contact details at all
• 6.4% didn’t provide a website address
• 1 business had listed a website address that was incorrect
• None included links to their social media channels
• 51% didn’t provide a contact email address
• 53% didn’t provide a contact phone number
• 5% were using generic email addresses provided by the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft

The 32 “biggest names in motorcycling” – the bike manufacturers – also have profile pages on the site. At the time of writing, 6 out of the 32 remain blank with an “Information coming soon…” message displayed.

I asked the exhibition co-ordinator, Dean Lineham, if exhibitors were charged extra for making use of the promotional pages. He confirmed that the organisers publish whatever they’re given by each exhibitor and that no additional costs were involved. He did speculate, however, that some companies might choose not to provide contact details as a defence against unsolicited sales calls from exhibition contractors.

An understandable management decision perhaps, but rather short-sighted given the amount of consumer exposure the Motorcycle Live website receives for many weeks in advance of the event and the value to SEO of a link (or multiple links) from a highly relevant site. Not such a big deal for the big brands, but gold dust for smaller businesses.

Social Media Integration

Of the 188 sites correctly listed on the exhibition pages, two had been hacked to propogate malware and another three were “under construction”. The remaining 183 sites were visited and the following observations made:

• 23.5% linked to a Facebook profile, group or page

• 14.2% linked to a Twitter account

• 9.8% linked to a YouTube channel

• 14.2% were linking to more than one social platform

• 6.6% were offering an RSS feed

• 7.1% featured a content sharing mechanism

• 65% had no social media integration at all

For those with some degree of social media integration, the descending proportions using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are as might be expected. Although not recorded as part of the research, quite a few of the sites featured a blog. Either a blog or some sort of “latest news” feature were the source of the RSS feeds.

Even among the businesses not promoting social channels, the low implementation rate for a quick-win solution like content sharing supports the view that there is a fundamental and widespread lack of understanding about the value of social media. Significantly, the research found no correlation between business size (and brand fame) and the use or non-use of social media.

It may seem surprising that such a high proportion of businesses aren’t involving themselves in social media at all, but that’s the reality of the current situation. Social media marketing receives a mammoth amount of attention in the press (especially in the marketing industry), but out there in the real world the majority of businesses don’t know what to do with it.

Social Media Engagement

To put a little more meat on the bones of the overall statistics, the research went further by analysing the level of activity on Twitter of the exhibitors who were linking to their accounts.

At the time of writing, the average age of the exhibitors’ Twitter accounts was 374 days, yet the average level of activity was very low at only 0.4 tweets per day. Two accounts had no activity at all, while at the other end of the scale only two accounts demonstrated an average of more than one tweet per day.

Overall, the low level of activity and engagement evident on Twitter further reinforces the conclusion that businesses are failing to understand the medium and how to integrate it into their marketing and customer service operations.

The best (or worst) example I found that illustrates this situation is the great British bike manufacturer Triumph. They have an excellent website and they’re among the more socially integrated exhibitors, with a very active Facebook presence, YouTube channel and content sharing.

Their site doesn’t link to a Twitter account, but they do have one @TriumphOfficial. Despite having over 1,700 followers, Triumph haven’t tweeted at all and aren’t following anyone.

It’s the same story with their Stateside account too. @TriumphAmerica has over 800 followers, but there haven’t been any tweets.

There are a number of possible reasons behind Triumph’s lack of activity on Twitter. It could be a conscious strategic decision to concentrate on Facebook. It could simply be a lack of resources to manage the accounts, although this seems unlikely. It might also be because they’ve yet to figure out how best to engage with the channel. Whatever the reason, it’s undoubtedly a missed opportunity.

SEO and Web Analytics

Only 46.5% of the exhibitors had implemented Google Analytics tracking, with another three sites using an alternative tracking system. Although the lack of client-side tracking code doesn’t rule out the possibility that log file analysis is being employed, it seems that more than half the businesses exhibiting at Motorcycle Live have no method of monitoring the performance of their sites and the behaviour of their visitors.

Incredibly, just 20.8% of the exhibitors with working sites had attempted to implement any kind of on-page SEO strategy. Within the group that were using Google Analytics, the proportion was a little higher at 26.7%, compared to only 15.6% among those without tracking.

Best Integration of Social Media

Out of all the businesses included in the research, one stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of social media integration. And it wasn’t a big brand.

Gasthof Hochalmspitze is a hotel and restaurant located in the southern province of Carinthia in Austria and run by British ex-pats Ros and John Gowers.

Their very well-designed (multi-lingual) website links to, and displays content from, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and offers an RSS feed of their latest news. But they’ve gone further (the only business exhibiting at Motorcycle Live to do so) with Flickr and Foursquare integration as well.

Explaining their decision to take the social media bull by the horns, Ros Gowers said:

We were faced with the need to develop a new customer base very quickly (we aren’t exactly at the start of our business careers!) and to attract people to an area that is largely unknown compared to its much better advertised neighbours, and inspired by our already social media savvy friends at Alm-Studio.

They’re not just linking to the social channels though. Ros and John (pictured) are clearly putting the effort in to engage with their growing audience.

The Facebook and Twitter accounts are genuinely active. In fact their Twitter account is the most active of all the exhibitors with an average of 2.6 tweets per day.

I asked Ros to summarise the benefits they’ve received from their social media marketing. Here’s what she said:

We find the use of social media channels to be a really effective way of getting our message across to the biker community. Bikers talk to other bikers, whether in lay-bys, at biker cafes or online – using Facebook, Twitter, biker forums and the like is just an extension of this. By the time people arrive for their holiday, they already feel they know us. It makes the ‘making guests feel welcome’ process so much easier! Our use of social media enables us to form and continue more personal relationships with our guests.

It’s great to find an example like this of a business that really “gets it” and which is generating tangible value from social media. However, it also begs the obvious question: If a middle-aged couple who don’t have a background in digital marketing (who are working on their own, with a tiny budget, while also running a busy hotel) can achieve such an admirable level of social media integration, why can’t everyone else? What do they know that the likes of Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha don’t?

The Digital Marketing Challenge

The aim of the research project was to benchmark the level of social media integration within the motorcycle industry and, in doing so, provide a general barometer of social media adoption in the UK.

Overall, the results were far from positive with 65% of businesses having no social media integration at all. Combine this with the peripheral findings about the lack of SEO and web analytics and it’s clear that there’s still a huge gulf between the leading edge of digital marketing and the everyday reality for most businesses.

The benchmark study will be repeated next year to provide a measure of progress towards greater social media integration and more informed digital marketing. In the meantime, the challenge for businesses is to understand the commercial relevance of social media marketing (not to mention SEO and web analytics) and to formulate realistic strategies for its integration.

With that in mind, until the end of this year Heartwood Digital is offering one day of free digital marketing consultancy to every UK-based manufacturer, charity and tour operator exhibiting at Motorcycle Live 2010.