You Only need three legs 1.0.2 | Page 37

Democratization of brand influence and brand growth For Brands, Social Media shows returns but Measurement Hurdles Remain As expected when companies' give an avenue to their customer's to provide feedback and engage with its products using social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Foursquare, they see market share gains and improvements in sales and marketing efforts. One bad experience for a brand with a customer, on average is communicated on social media four to five times more times, than a job well done. Also, given that it costs six to eight times, more to acquire a net new customer, than to crosssell and up-sell to an existing customer, it is key to today, not merely satisfy your customer- the goal should be to Delight the customer- customer satisfaction is old school- the new mantra and paradigm shift needed is to Thrill, Engage and Delight (TED) your customer and entire supply chain. Social media plays a critical role in the democratization of brand influence. The power has shifted from the producer to the consumer. The lack of a standardized measurement metric, though makes it difficult to quantify the specific gains in brand value and ROI when one integrates social media marketing as a component of one's overall internet marketing plan. A beginning has been made, though there is a long way to go. 37