Exclusive Interview With SAP’s Director Of Social Media

The core underlying vision for B2Bbloggers is to be an online magazine for B2B marketers by B2B marketers. One of the ways we are delivering on that vision is through interviews with B2B marketers. Thus far those interviews have included Jeffrey Hayzlett, Stacey Holleran, and Gord Hotchkiss.

Today, I introduce you to Michael Brenner (@BrennerMichael), the Director of Online and Social Media Marketing for SAP. You may already know him from his guest contributing here or his excellent blog, the B2BMarketing Insider. In our interview he shares his first hand experience implementing B2B social media programs and offers advice to other B2B marketers embarking on this exciting journey. Enjoy the read.

Jeremy: Tell me a bit about yourself, your role in SAP, and the size of the team that is responsible for social media, content marketing, and online communities.

Michael: My role at SAP is to manage Online and Social Media Marketing programs and strategy for our North American regional field marketing team. There is a group of us that support these areas plus email and webcast execution services. Traditional content marketing and online community marketing in our company is typically managed by our global teams, however, there is a percentage that is done locally. With social media some of our content is more “user-generated” and then coordinated by our team.

Jeremy: What is it about SAP’s culture that has fostered the evolution of your B2B marketing to include social media and content marketing?

Michael: The growth of social media has not gone unnoticed at SAP. One of the largest groups to utilize social media for business decision-making includes technology professionals and executives involved in technology decisions. Additionally, the growth in the use of mobile devices is something that is a key component of our business and social media and mobile use go hand-in-hand. We recognize the need to be where our customers are interacting with content.

Jeremy: What was it that caused SAP to understand that this is more than a passing fad and that social media content marketing are effective ways of attracting and retaining customers?

Michael: The single biggest factor that drove us head-first into social media has been our own customers and their use of social media in peer-to-peer conversations. As a company, we have placed innovation and customer value at the heart of what we do. To enable our customers, we recognized the growing need to create value-based and reference content so that customers could share that content and their own individual references with each other. Finally, we created a world-class community in the SAP Community Network to enable our customers to network, share best practices and grow as people and professionals.

Jeremy: Was there something specific about the types of people that are your customers that caused SAP to believe that now is the right time to be utilizing social media and content marketing as part of your marketing strategy?

Michael: Our customers are passionate. When we make a mistake, they are quick to let us know. So we wanted to take a position of openness and put that passion and feedback to work for them and for SAP.

Jeremy: Tell me the story behind the SAP Facebook Friend Optimizer. Has it achieved your outcomes?

Michael: Bringing a personal and relevant business intelligence experience directly to the end users is especially important for the marketing team for SAP Crystal solutions since our customers are individuals in SMEs.  When investigating social media tactics, we identified the Facebook application as an optimal tool to create awareness for Crystal solutions and to provide a fun, personal business intelligence user experience without forcing users to do significant setup or data connection work.

Yes, the Friend Network Optimizer has reached our goals, which were to create awareness for the SAP Crystal solutions portfolio and to indirectly drive downloads for SAP Crystal Presentation Design.  Since launch, it has been recommended by influential bloggers such as ZDNet and has indirectly driven significant numbers of SAP Crystal Presentation Design downloads.

Jeremy: How are you measuring the success of your B2B social media and content marketing initiatives? Who is accountable for their successful or failure? What metrics are most important to you?

Michael: We are taking a programmatic approach. It is not about ROI necessarily because of the difficulty in directly attributing positive outcomes with social media activity. But there is no question about the strategic value. So we started by driving a cross-functional social media strategy that involved input from marketing, sales, service, communications, branding, all our relations teams (analyst, press, media, influencer) and product teams. This was orchestrated by marketing but we reached out across the organization. We wanted to make sure we had the right objectives set and the right standards and policies in place. Then we set out to drive social monitoring so we could effectively listen to the conversations across social channels. We are utilizing those technologies to search for “demand signals” where a prospect may be interested in hearing from us or looking for more information about our products.

But this is done with respect as members of the communities in which we are participating in this way. We enabled all our marketing disciplines to use social promotion across our various tactics (email, events, etc.).  We are working to utilize the power of our thousands of employees through training and support. So the answer really comes down to how well we are supporting our corporate strategy through social media vs. measuring the number of leads or amount of sales we generated. Now with all that being said, we are tracking followers, clicks, website traffic, registrations and all the other typical lead generation metrics you would expect to see out of our social media marketing efforts so that we can track what is working best.

Jeremy: What advice do you have for other B2B marketers who are in the process of shaping their company’s social media efforts?

Michael: The biggest mistake I see is forgetting to establish a clear set of objectives that are aligned to corporate strategy. Social media is not a strategy or an objective itself. It is a means to achieve a larger objective. To me it starts with understanding where your customers are (in social channels) and asking whether your company wants or needs to be a part of those conversations. Then you can decide on the tactical details of who and how to engage.

Jeremy: With close to 10,000 employees in the Americas alone, it seems that SAP must have a social media policy. Can you tell me a bit about it? What was it like rolling it out in an organization of your size?

Michael: Social Media policies all look pretty much the same and mainly come down to common sense. You need to tell employees the basics. Do not release confidential information. Identify your thoughts and opinions as personal views and not representative of the company. The rest is common sense like “don’t pick fights” and “be polite.” The one decision you need to make is to determine at what level you want to encourage active employee participation. Some companies subtly discourage it because they may be in industries with some sensitivity like the legal profession or government employees. Other companies encourage participation in order to use employees as a beacon and ambassadors of the brand. In some cases it comes down to culture and how open you want your employees to be.

Jeremy: If there was one myth you could dispel about B2B social media and content marketing, what would it be?

Michael: I think the biggest myth is that the only way to see the benefit of using social media is with ROI. It’s about more than direct measurable business results. I am a huge advocate for driving marketing programs that drive results and sales. Social media isn’t just about marketing. It’s about how a company treats its employees, customers, prospects and their larger ecosystem. It’s about engaging in real conversations with the market in the way the market has decided to communicate. It’s about being real. It’s about creating content people want to consume that is helpful in solving a real problem for them and their company. In my opinion, if we do this, B2B companies will be successful in social media.

Jeremy: What’s next for SAP, for marketing, and for Michael?

Michael: I’m optimistic. I’m optimistic for SAP as a company and for marketers in general that social media is forcing us to have the right conversations. I see functional barriers being worn down and a renewed focus on the customer. And the companies and marketers that do this are going to participate in the benefits.

Jeremy: We are both in the Philly area, how many wins will the Eagles have this season? And will the Phillies win the division?

Michael: I’m thinking 9 wins for the Eagles and a late-season surge by the Phillies that will propel them to their 2nd World Series win in 3 years.

Thanks for your time Michael. It is greatly appreciated. Much can be learned from the direction SAP is heading and the focus you have on learning your customers and engaging with them where and how they would like to be interacted with.