Be it ever so subtle a change, it is there nonetheless. Traditional investing approaches usually incorporate a heavy dose of statistical analysis that involves looking at a corporation’s past and present. What has their past performance been, what are the best quarters to invest in them, how do their stocks cycle between highs and lows, what does their product portfolio look like, what are the press releases and news articles saying about them, etc. The hope is that these will provide tips to the investor about a corporation’s future so good investment or divestiture decisions can be made.
But there is a new dimension to corporate analysis now that I submit should also be explored. It begins with this one question:
“Is the corporation marketing effectively to its potential customers?”
A corporation’s success is defined first and foremost by sales of its products and services. To do that, it has to be reaching its potential customers where they live with the right kind of message so that the customer choses to make a purchase. And since consumer loyalty is needed to continue to drive the engine of repeat sales, effective customer retention strategies are paramount. Simply advertising one’s products on TV, in magazines, newspapers, etc. is not enough anymore. In fact, many desired customers are not even here any longer so this type of advertising does not even reach them.
If you take a look around, people are no longer reading newspapers and magazines on their way to work – it just is not as convenient as spending time on their smart-phones. When they get home at night, do they relax and watch a television series and watch the ads every 10 minutes of air-time? No, they pre-record what they watch so they can fast-forward through the ads or they are spending their time surfing for movies on Netflix or for what others are creating on YouTube or similar platforms now available through devices such as Apple TV. Traditional advertising is not reaching them. Part of the allure to them about these alternative platforms is in effect the absence of advertising.
The world of advertising has changed. Money spent on traditional advertising approaches is yielding ever diminishing sales conversion results. The world has gone digital; it has gone smart-phone; it has gone video; and it has gone social media. This is where corporations will find the consumers they want to target today.
So as an investor, what should you be looking for? I submit to you that you should be looking for companies that you see are really starting to get it and are starting to build substantial subscriber bases in the world of social media as it is these types of corporations that are reaching consumers and driving to successful futures.
Let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate the point.
WestJet Airlines of Canada has a YouTube channel with over 51,000 active subscribers and they have created YouTube videos that have had millions of views each. They also have over 670,000 active followers on their Facebook page. This corporation whose core business is flying people from city to city, pulls people to them with videos that are funny and/or show people exotic resorts they can reach just by flying with this airline. There share values increase and decrease seasonally as do those of all airlines, but their general trending over the past five years has seen them continue to safely grow.
Amazon has over 65,000 subscribers on YouTube and has created videos that have been viewed millions of times – one has had over 65 million views. The “Amazon app” on Facebook has over 5,000,000 users monthly. Over the past five years, their shares have increased in value from around $200 a share to $675 a share.
There is a website on the Internet called “Social Blade” that can give you statistics on both people and corporations that have built YouTube video channels. WestJet’s channel has had over 73 million views to date and Amazon’s channel has had over 126 million video views to date.
If I were investing in any corporation these days, I would be checking them out on both Facebook and on Social Blade to see just how significant their “social presence” was. As you can tell by the viewing numbers of the videos and Facebook pages of just these two corporations above, social media platforms are where your future consumers of products and services have gone.
Corporations showing good “Follower” bases on core social media platforms such as these are actively out where the consumers are and they will be making the “future” sales as a result.
About Dan Grijzenhout: For close to thirty years, Dan has been a consulting professional working to executive levels for both private and public sector organizations globally, a number of which were "Fortune" level enterprises. Dan has founded, operated and sold an online global payment services company that moves millions of dollars on behalf of its 100,000 plus account holders annually and he has been interviewed on the show "World Business Review" by former head of NATO and Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig, for his work in advanced digital and online telecommunications services incorporating online and card based "Loyalty" programs. Dan has written two books now being sold through Amazon Kindle and Create Space (One on BPR and the other on Social Media Strategy); he has written and published over 40 social media related training/learning articles, and has created over 70 YouTube training videos and video podcasts that are playable on mobile platforms such as Smart Phones. (http://howtoguru.org/mobile/index.html)
