Margot Heiligman and I presented on November 18 at Womma 09: success story about MyVenturePad

1. Social Media 4 ROI
A Case in Proof:
MyVenturepad.com
Developing and Managing a Social
Media Site for Small and Midsized
Business

2. Best Practices in Social Media Marketing:
Business Outcomes, Success we can Measure!
1. Awareness and Buzz including mentions in Mainstream
Press
2. Featured questions on LinkedIn to generate on the order
of 20% of our net new prospects
3. Over 100 influencers on board including reach to
hundreds of thousands of followers on twitter
4. Filling the sales pipeline to the tune of hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
5. Noted by leading thinktanks as a “Best Practices” for
marketing to small and midsized business

3. Who Where is your “customer”?
Traditional marketing tools
(sap.com, newsletters, …) =
one-way push, limited reach
Social Media Can Help
Where potential target
companies / customers
are…
associations
Peers
Chamber of
commerce
partners
Sap.
com

4. Where Who are your influencers?
Identify, Engage, Leverage, Measure.
Classification
ofInfluencers
Research & Thought Leadership: „Swath‟ Influencers: Web 2.0:
Case studies, research, high
magnitude, C-suite, Compliance
Market segment-specific MVP bloggers, social networks, feeds
CommunityofInterest
Accountants,
Attorneys, SME
business
professional
advisors
VC and Private
Equity
Women Executives,
Women Managed
Entrepreneurs,
Regions
Domain-specific,
CRM, BI, ERP
Social Networks,
SaaS
Accounting:
■ xxx
Legal / Compliance
■ xxx
■ Xxx
■ xxx
Business Analytics
■ xxx
VC:
■ Xxx
■ Xxx
■ Xxx
PE
■ xxx
Women:
■ Xxx
■ xxx
■ xxx
China
■ xxx
YEO:
■ Xxx
■ Xxx
■ Xxx
■ Xxx
■ xxx
Regions:
■ Xxx
■ xxx
CRM
■ Xxx
■ xxx
BNT4SME
■ Xxx
■ xxx
Business Analytics
■ xxx
ERP
■ xxx
Social Networks
■ MyVenturepad
■ LinkedIn
■ Facebook
■ Twitter
■ YouTube
SaaS
■ Xxx
■ Xxx
■ xxx

5. 1:MANY:1 - Creating “Meta-Conversation”:
Targeted, purpose-driven, online community  Results!
podcasts
blogging
commenting
micro-blog
WordFrame
discussion
LinkedIn
You-Tube
Twitter
Email
newsletter
surveys
white papers
webinars
video
itunes
connections
profiling
Activities
Platforms
Meta-conversation
* All linked by brand
wikiwikis

6. Objectives for the SME Community:
Address the Pain of Small and Mid-sized business
Objectives for SAP:
 Increase SAP brand awareness in the SME market
 Aggregate bloggers and influencers of interest to small
business
 Establish SAP as a trusted advisor to small business
 Create and drive lead generation for SME sales

7. MyVenturepad is BIG News for emerging growth companies!
MyVenturepad is a moderated online growth business community for 2000+ owners and
managers of small and midsized companies, and for the professionals who advise them. Its
produced by SocialMediaToday, the leading bloggers/thinkers on Social Media and Web 2.0,
and sponsored by SAP.
It’s a great place to find answers and insights to help you manage and grow your business.
By registering for the site, you’ll be able to connect with some of the world’s best bloggers
and influencers of growth companies. MyVenturepad’s sub-communities drive topics such as
Deal Makers, Finance, Green Business, Managing People and Leadership, which will help you
focus on what’s most important to you. Join the conversation!
http://www.myventurepad.com
MyVenturepad:
Letting the Conversation take shape

8. MyVenturePad (MVP) Promotional Assets
BANNER AD:
Promotion for SAP
Hard Offer: “Fast Start for
SAP All-In-One”
BADGE Promotion:
Economic Stimulus
package “eBOOK”
BLOGS:
Blogger Outreach,
Achieving hundreds of
views, featuring 100
influencers, includes a few
SAP spokespeople.

9. MyVenturepad Growth and Milestones:
2000+ members
24 ms:
11/09
#ofcommunitymembers(SMEs)
Time 
12 ms:
12/08
18 ms:
06/09
Phase 1: Intro
MVP Membership:
■ 500 by April, 2008
Seismic Event:
■ Key influencers added:
Seth Godin, Jeff
Cornwall, Guy
Kawasaki etc.
■ Produced “Social Media
to Grow your Business”
Webinar with Seth Godin.
Phase 3: Leverage
& Demand Gen
MVP Membership:
■ 2001 SMEs by June 24, 2009
Seismic Event(s)
■ eBOOK: “What the Economic
Stimulus package means for
Growing Business” SAP,
MVP and SCORE.org drove
250 leads -> SME Funnel
■ sap.com  500 more leads
■ Over 10‟000 uniques per
month consistently
Phase 4:
Global
MVP membership:
■ 3500+ January 1,
2010 ~
Seismic Event (s)
■ ByDesign GTM
■ China Language
■ Spanish language
■ Region-specific
(BRIC)
100015002000500
6 ms
Apr 08
Phase 2:
Demand Gen
MVP Membership:
■ 1200 by December 30,
2008
Seismic Event(s)
■ “Weathering the
Economy” paper and
webinar series.
■ 972 leads for total event
■ 200 new leads for SME
funnel through MVP
Nov07

10. Blogger Outreach through SAP and
MyVenturepad bloggers
We’ve initiated
“Blogger outreach” to
SAP bloggers and
MyVenturepad
bloggers to get their
followers to join up and
participate in the
webinar.
They place this badge
and other assets on
their websites, and blog
& tweet about us, and
more

11. Other Channels We’ve Leveraged Include:
LinkedIn: The Featured Question, The Poll...
…

12. Twitter channel. “How the Influence Flies”
Our message  Influencers  Customers
Social Media Today
twitter API
SAP Team
@PGreenbe: SAP took some
business leadership, rather
than following the easier
path of technology sales,
during the current crisis
@GuyKawasaki: SAP
and MyVenturepad
“The Stimulus” What it
means for your
business.
http://Bit.ly/kpqpwl
SAP Partners &
Customers
Influencer
Engagement
Models

13. How to Build and Engage a Community of SME
Influencers
 Engage influencers in Creative and Meaningful ways
 Promote active engagement, enabling SMEs and growth
companies to solve critical business issues
 Listen, observe without actually inserting ourselves into
the conversation

14. Tweaking It: Social Network Fine-Tuning Builds
Participation, Leads and Buzz
© SAP 2007 / Page 14
• While SAP/SMT team tracked comments and the subsequent interaction, we
found too much competition in the broad market.
• A subset of the most popular influencers were those who targeted a slightly
different segment of the small business market – a segment more appropriate
to SAP’s goals
• That subtle shift among the posters, readers and community members
prompted the team to quickly re-engineer the site and tweak MVP to better
serve that audience and create passion and affiliation
“In the current market, where broad-based media is eroding rapidly, creating,
developing and defending niche content will win the day.” – Andrew Heyward

15. Leveraging MVP as a Platform for Lead
Generation and Brand Building:
…Changing the Way We Do Volume Marketing
Social Media Can Help
• Build awareness via word-of-mouth
• Engagement by conversation
• Drive higher volume via broader reach
• Enable fast monitoring & feedback
Hypothesis Experiments
Jun ~ Jul 2009
Sep ~ Nov 2008
Disclaimer: Still early & evolving, still learning, limited experi., mostly campaign focused…

16. Measuring the Results:
“Weathering the Economy” Forum
10 thought leaders
(economists, experts, SAP
customers)
What We Did:
1,000+ registrations
Plus:
•online responses
•webinar attendees
•marketing leads
•prospects
•new contacts
•existing prospects
3 live webinars
(Sep 25th, Oct 22nd, Nov
20th)
2 online forums
(myventurepad.com,
LinkedIn.com)
WTE Forum Campaign
Generated Media Interest:
…
Discussion Forums, Blogging, social networking, Twitter, etc.
CTO, PolyGlass
CEO, Social Media
Today
Director,
Professor, PSU
CEO, Jana
Matthews Group

17. Buzz and Awareness By “Word-of-Mouth”
6,000 followers
150,000 followers
2,200 followers
Ross Dawson Blog
Marketing Interactions
Blog
Small Biz Survival Blog
MVP blogger outreach
Broadcasted by 10 bloggers
Picked up by major press
Twitted by SAP4SME
Twitted by Guy Kawasaki
Re-twitted by 15 Twitters
109
Registrations +
press coverage
99
Registrations

18. Engagement By 2-Way Conversations
4 LinkedIn Featured Questions 1,500+ responses / comments
LinkedIn Discussions Comments from 20+ LinkedIn Groups
50+
Registrations
90+
Registrations

19. MyVenturepad’s KPIs: Double Digit
Growth, Cost per Lead, Filling pipeline
Milestone Description
Registered
Membership
2300 + small and mid-sized companies as registered members
September
Visitors -
15,500 unique visitors via 119 sources and mediums (linked-to’s via)... twitter, facebook, etc.
Page Views: 209’740 Page Views, 30% returning visitors
Average time September 2009: 3min 23 seconds
Countries Top Visitors are US, UK, Canada, DE, India, Australia, CI, Ire, Phil, Sing.
“Influentials” (Bloggers): 100 total
#Blogs and
Comments...
Roughly 35 posts per day on average. 1.5 comments per day.
Sales Qualified
Leads
327
Pipeline
Revenue
$ hundreds of 1000’s from social media for the campaign
Double Digit growth per
month!

20. Thank you.
Margot.Heiligman@sap.com @sap4sme @mheiligman
Robin@socialmediatoday.com @socialmedia2day