Interview with Kevin Ertell Vice President of Retail Strategy, ForeSee Results

Earlier this week I published the findings of the ForeSee Results 2010 Social Media Report. Kevin Ertell who is Vice President of Retail Strategy for ForeSee Results and author of the report kindly agreed to answer my question about the report.

I found the results of the report really interesting Kevin. What one or two things from the Social Media Report jumped out to you

I was surprised to see how many people wanted to hear about new products and promotions from retailers they friended on Facebook. I find it encouraging that retailers’ best customer are eager to hear marketing messages in a forum that has been widely believed to be personal “no marketing zone” space.

That 25% of the Top 100 online retailers does not have a Facebook fan page is astounding. What it holding online retailers (who by definition “get” the Internet) back from marketing on social media sites?

The 25% was an informal look–we basically went to Facebook and searched for all of the Top 100 retailers and couldn’t find pages for 25% of them. What’s interesting is that if you Google a retailer’s name and facebook, it seems that some of the ones I thought didn’t have a page do have one. But if you can’t find it by searching on Facebook, it’s a lot less powerful.

I think the bigger obstacle might be lack of clear strategy or execution of less effective strategies leading to poor results. If customer want to know about new products and promotions and the retailer is giving them polls and silly status updates it wouldn’t be surprising to find the retailer getting poor results and deciding to assign resources elsewhere.

It strikes me that people are following or friending brands that they already have an existing relationship with. How can brands use social media to reach out to potential customers, who maybe are not that familiar with them?

I think it’s impressive that these loyal customers are friending brands in such a public forum. Social networks are incredibly powerful, so brands should look for ways to engage their best customers and give them the tools to spread the word via their own networks.

What companies/brands that you think are doing the best job marketing via social media?

I think Victoria’s Secret and Best Buy are doing the best job. VS has really focused in giving customer what they want on Facebook, and their fan count seems to indicate they are successful.