Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
The millions of conversations on social media provide us new ways to learn more about what matters to our customers.
Pete Healy
GyroHSR
he best businesses in any industry focus tirelessly on the ultimate driver of their success: the customer. The confectionery industry has important channel partners distributors, wholesalers, retailers who are, of course, valued customers. But the ultimate arbiter of our success is the customer we call a consumer, because this is the person who decides whether our teainfused chocolate, our carbonated chewing gum or our guacamole-flavored jelly bean is worth the money in his or her pocket today, and whether it will still be worth the price tomorrow. Understanding customers and thereby gaining their business depends largely, of course, on listening. Even when a customer isnt yet sure what he or she wants, that very uncertainty can provide us insights that lead to new opportunities to meet that customers needs and very possibly the same or similar needs of the customers friends, family or colleagues. This is true whether we sell candy, computers or carpeting. In just the last five years our ability to
listen to and understand customers for now, lets focus specifically on consumers has grown almost unimaginably through the advent of social media. By now the names of social network sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn have become familiar to many of us, but these represent just a part of the tens of millions of online conversations that also take place around the clock on blogs, forums and platforms such as Twitter. Millions of additional pieces of what has come to be known as consumer-generated content photos shared on Flickr, videos uploaded to YouTube and the like are posted daily. If our ability to capture consumer conversations five years ago was akin to overhearing occasional snatches of water-cooler conversation, it now seems that we have been transported into the middle of cacophonous crowds in Times Square on New Years Eve. And, frankly, the quality of the conversations varies as broadly as the range of topics, from the mundane to the philosophical, from politics to potato chips. We are, after
Pete Healy is VP account planning at GyroHSR LLC. Prior to this appointment he was the director of Crowbar Marketing. He previously worked at Perfetti Van Melle USA and Jelly Belly Candy Company.
Figure 1
Approximately 80,000 blogs are launched each day, with the total now numbering in excess of 110 million.
Figure 3
Figure 4
Consumers use social media to amplify their engagement. Their posts accelerate imitation and engagement by others. Marketers can access these engagements more easily and broadly than ever before.
on technical issues, particularly in international contexts. Marketing Facebook to engage consumers in conversation about your brands and products. Twitter and Facebook to promote and report in real time on sponsored events, roadshows, in-store demos. Flickr to share event photos, or to invite consumers to post their own photos related to their experience of your brands or products. YouTube to share event or roadshow video, or to invite consumer-generated content related to a contest or promotion. Google Analytics to understand visitor traffic to and on your brand or company website, and to integrate website and social-media consumer/brand touchpoints more effectively. Mobile applications to deliver incentives and personalized content to opt in consumers (may be triggered by shopper scans of quick response codes at point of sale). Sales/trade support LinkedIn Company or Group page(s) for distribution of value-add information to channel partners or retail trade customers. Twitter for real-time updates on in-store demos or other promotional events. Customer service/consumer affairs Addictomatic or similar low-cost tools to scan consumer sentiment or response to specific events. Twitter or Facebook to engage consumers, facilitate resolution of complaints, project responsive image for the company. INTEGRATION INTO BUSINESS STRATEGIESXXXXXXXXXXXXXX By its nature, social media is open and accessible. Conversation and collaboration replace the one-way push communications of traditional advertising and Web 1.0 corporate websites. Social media therefore challenges companies to attain higher lev-
Thats all great, one may ask, but whats the bottom line? Whats the r o i (return on investment) of social media for a candy company? In these early days of this new media landscape, there is no single, simple answer. The good news is that tools of measurement abound; the big questions are what to measure, and why. Some successful business people see social media as an investment in learning more about customers through dialogue, or as a way to anticipate and leverage trends sooner and more effectively. What is the r o i on equipping your sales force with cell phones? What was the point of creating a company website 10 years ago? In fact, as more companies begin to use social media, what may have provided a competitive edge two years ago is fast becoming table stakes. But as we know, ultimately there is a cost and, therefore, a net value to any business activity. The debate over the roi of social media reflects the tension between opportunity and risk in a new marketing landscape. But it has been intensified by attempts (often by social-media proponents) to apply financial terminology to nonfinancial measures: the number of hits on a company microsite, the number of fans on a Facebook brand page, the number of views of a companys YouTube video and the like. These can be meaningful indicators, but they clearly are not financial measures.
The fundamental goal is to tap social media as a new tool to gain customer insights, to innovate, to build brand loyalty that drives sales and to improve operations while reducing internal functional silos.
with brands and with the companies that produce those brands. The one-way push of traditional advertising is now joined by conversations moving in all directions. In this rapidly changing landscape, marketers fear losing control of their brands and ceos wonder whether social media can really help business. But if nothing else, we have learned that the millions of conversations on social media can teach us new ways to learn more about what matters to our customers, including how they influence each other, and why they choose to purchase or bypass our products. We can explore the new social-media landscape one step at a time, learning as we go, if were committed in that effort. This includes the clear understanding that fans on Facebook dont equal register rings, but that more fans can mean more sales, more often if we set the right goals and measures. People are talking about our brands; that is a simple reality. The question is whether we believe we can grow our businesses by ignoring or by engaging in those conversations. As new as social media still is, smart companies already know the answer. n REFERENCES
Bernoff, Josh. Empowered. Forrester Blogs. January 2010. Web: http://forrester.typepad. com/groundswell/2010/01/conversationalistsget-onto-the-ladder.html Bernoff, Josh, Charlene Li. Social Technographics Ladder. Forrester Research, 2010. Solis, Brian. The Conversation Prism v2.0. @BrianSolis blog. March 30, 2009. Web: h t t p : / / w w w. b r i a n s o l i s. c o m / 2 0 0 9 / 0 3 / conversation-prism-v20/