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MANAGEMENT
Social skills
Social media now plays
a huge role in how farm
equipment manufacturers
get their marketing message
out, and how they hear
back from customers
By Scott Garvey, CG Machinery Editor
t’s time for our photo game #AGCO fans,”
reads the latest tweet to pop up on my Twitter
feed. It was tweeted by someone in AGCO’s
marketing department. “What tractor do you
think this picture comes from?” it goes on to
ask. Included is a link to an online digital image of the
inside of one of the company’s tractor cabs — one of
Massey Ferguson’s new 5600 Series models, I suspect.
It was an invitation to all of AGCO’s Twitter
followers to submit their guesses, a friendly game
prompting two-way interaction between the brand
and its enthusiasts, keeping them engaged.
A few minutes later, another tweet arrives from
John Deere with a link to an online video on its
YouTube page offering tips on how to organize precision planting data.
These tweets are typical of what social media
managers at all the major equipment brands are
throwing out to their Twitter followers. Anyone who
“follows” the major brands will have received hundreds like these over the span of a year.
It’s a clear indication that the importance of
social media hasn’t been lost on the major manufacturers. It now plays a major role in how farm
equipment manufacturers get their word out. But
what’s even more profound is the way social media
are actually changing what these companies want
to achieve, which is a far cry from advertising in its
more traditional form.
Instead, like any other Facebook “friend” or
Twitter “follower” the brands want to develop a new
kind of interactive relationship with farmers.
In the end, however, the motivation is still to sell
machines.
“It’s changed the way companies think about
how they do business,” says Subbu Sivaramakrishnan, associate professor at the Asper School
of Business in Winnipeg’s University of Manitoba.
“Back in the olden days, there was traditional marketing. Most of the communication was through
mass media. It had what you would consider a push
orientation, where companies basically pushed their
products on to the consumer and hoped they would
MARCH 29, 2013
buy. What social media has done is, it’s created a
very collective way of thinking and doing business.”
By exploiting social media, the hard-sell, one-way
push has been replaced by two-way conversation
designed to engage potential buyers in an entirely
new way.
“There’s one main difference,” Sivaramakrishnan
continues. “Think of it this way: it’s not that companies are screaming out what they want people to hear.
Now, it’s like being in a big room. Everyone chooses
to enter and become part of a discussion. The company doesn’t have to push things on you anymore,
because you chose to become part of the discussion.”
And in any discussion, information flows both
ways. Taking advantage of that fact gives companies
another reason to engage with consumers. Social
media offers a return pipeline loaded with consumer
opinion. Scanning an online chat site that focuses on
machinery or sifting through Twitter messages lets
any company executive tap into the thoughts and
opinions of those farmers who use or have looked at
his brand’s machinery.
“We use it to evaluate what the market thinks of us,”
said Mark Harrington, vice-president of Trimble, who
formed part of a manufacturers’ discussion panel at Ag
Connect Expo in Kansas City in January. Social media
was one of the topics covered. “There’s a harsh reality
out there. We use it (social media) to see what the market
really thinks of us. It’s like an early warning device.”
But just as social media can play a role in identifying problems, it can also be part of finding solutions to
them. While companies still organize focus groups and
Continued on page 40
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MANAGEMENT
Continued from page 39
conduct consumer surveys, social media
use accelerates the rate at which feedback
flows in, and it greatly expands the number of sources that provide it.
The digital discussions aren’t colour
blind, either. By monitoring comments
about competitors’ equipment, it’s as if
executives at one brand get to tap into their
competition’s marketing surveys and find
out how they are faring when it comes to
customer satisfaction. It also enables them
to see what features on other products are
getting high marks for desirability, making
for a quick way to do some self-evaluation
and rate their own company’s performance.
That opportunity to engage a lot of producers in a very short time with very little
expense is unprecedented. Sivaramakrishnan notes the latest estimates are that up to
90 per cent of young farmers are online and
engaged in social media. Brands only need
to find a way to engage them, hence strategies like that guess-the-cab Twitter game.
That’s part of how the traditional push
of products Sivaramakrishnan describes
changes to a pull. “If I’m a machinery
manufacturer, I can get people involved
in the discussion,” he explains. “I can get
literally thousands of people involved in
something like product development, and
every step of the way I can involve my
consumers. And human thinking is this: if
I’m involved in the development of something, I’m more likely to patronize it.”
Farmer input is something the brands
have repeatedly said they embrace when it
comes to product design and evaluation,
with or without social media. “It’s that
constant customer interaction that keeps
us alive,” said Gary MacDonald, executive vice-president of MacDon Industries,
who was part of that manufacturers’ discussion panel. “Interaction with the enduser is how we improve our products.”
It also means the time when companies could rely only on occasional surveys
or focus groups to keep up with buyer
expectations is quickly passing into history.
Many consumers are coming to expect
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MARCH 29, 2013
MANAGEMENT
to be able to join in a digital discussion
with manufacturers of all types. “It’s at a
point right now where if a company is not
doing social media marketing, it’s actually
considered a dinosaur,” says Sivaramakrishnan. “Nowadays, companies are on
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on.”
While the digital world is creating
new opportunities for marketing and
research, it’s also creating new challenges. Executives at all the major equipment brands have recognized the need
to be socially active — in a digital sense.
But the learning curve for many of them
has been a steep one.
“There’s a lot of data out there,” said
Jim Walker, Case IH’s vice-president of
North American ag business, as he spoke
on the manufacturers’ panel. “We had to
bring in someone from Harley Davidson
to help us with our social media.”
Only a couple of years ago, some of
the tweets coming from the major brands
were invitations to people with experience in social media marketing to apply
for newly created jobs. “There are many
companies that have social media marketing departments and social media officers
and managers,” notes Sivaramakrishnan.
“There are all kinds of new positions
being created within companies.”
However, the social media trend isn’t
all good news. Along with opportunity
comes risk. “The challenge is it also kills
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bad companies and bad products pretty
quickly,” says Sivaramakrishnan. “The
moment someone has a problem, all he
has to do is go to social media and blast
the company. That spreads like wildfire.
It makes companies stay on their toes; the
bad ones get punished pretty quickly.”
So what is the future of social media
marketing? “That’s a good question,” says
Sivaramakrishnan. “If you’d have asked
me (about marketing) 10 years ago, I’m not
sure I would have even mentioned social
media. Things are changing that quickly.
Now the sky’s the limit. It’s not going to
go away, but the way we see social media
today might seem old-fashioned 10 years
from now.” CG
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