Are You Ready to Commit?
In our line of business, we interact with many different businesses, from start-ups to Fortune 500 international conglomerates. It’s always interesting to hear them apologize for not being as educated as they should in the area of emerging media. They often tend to get disjointed or siloed. The truth is that as we get deeper into the diverse, converging landscape between digital media and marketing, many of the old rules of marketing no longer apply. Whether you are big or small, deep in resources or entrepreneurial in spirit, the landscape can be intimidating.
During a roundtable at our Fuel for Thought event, we discussed on a topic we often get asked by clients.
How can marketers incorporate the consumer’s point-of-view as a regular part of strategy sessions, extending beyond consumer-generated content, consumer-created advertising, corporate blogs and focus groups?
Being able to monitor, measure and implement consumer’s point of view has never been more important as the web is constantly opening up new avenues of conversation and new ways for consumers to voice their opinions on your brand. There are various resources and tools available in the market (more on this later). However before employing strategies, plans and applications, the first step is to commit to a long term brand initiative.
Strategy + Consumer Participation ≠ Success
Commitment + Strategy + Consumer Participation = Success
In other words, getting your consumer participation into your marketing and business strategy is not the silver bullet. It’s the commitment you make as an organization to an honest open discussions, marketing efforts, measurements and integration over time that will deliver success. This involves finding the right partners, monitoring conversations, measuring your buzz level, integrating offline/online efforts, properly setting website usability and conversion metrics, preparing your customer service and commitment to improve your initiatives beyond the test and launch stage. Our good friend Adam Broitman has an excellent point-of-view on this.
Just like any relationship, an organizational commitment to honesty and perseverance fosters brand trust. Wouldn’t you like to hear consumers say the same things about your brand?
Tags: marketing
Fuel for Thought LinkedIn Group
December 29th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Great points!
This is why social media/marketing requires fundamental change within organizations and on behalf of all brand stewards. This is not an overnight process–but then, anything worth having is worth working towards.