As an interactive agency, we are often asked for advice about how to most-effectively leverage social media to promote a product, brand, or company. We hear you. Unfortunately (and much to our clients' chagrin), there is no one-size-fits-all strategy.
How an organization should employ Social Media tactics is highly-variable and dependent upon the company's business and its customers. There is, however, one exception to my "no-formula" rule:
All companies benefit from listening to what their customers are saying through Social Media channels.
Adam Cohen and Gargi Patel published a great blog post in August 2009 about the "New Marketing Funnel." The key takeaway from that discussion is that Social Media's most powerful aspect lies in the creation of an awareness feedback loop from other customers. As Cohen and Patel point out, through Social Media, "[t]oday's marketing includes the customer's voice throughout the process, whether it's intentional or not." The post provides an excellent visualization of the "New Marketing Funnel" that shows this feedback loop (as adapted for this post in Figure 11)). A subtlety that the Cohen/Patel post didn't explicitly address, however, is that the customer voice is also an opportunity for companies to listen.
Recently, P&G's Pampers® Brand Diapers, specifically the new Dry Max versions, have been at the heart of a swirling parental Social Media outcry and debate. (If you want to learn more, simply do a Google News search for Pampers). AdvertisingAge did a piece on the initial story and also had exclusive coverage of the internal P&G reaction to this crisis.
What was most salient from AdvertisingAge's coverage is that P&G is not only listening to Social Media, it is listening intently. AdvertisingAge notes that there are four employees regularly assigned to the company's social media listening post. P&G is then able to utilize the information from this customer feedback to then shape the outbound marketing message by addressing comments from customers, whether they fall into the category of "legitimate concern" or "patently false and unfounded."
There are numerous lessons to take away from this controversy. Most importantly, this episode highlights the importance of listening to customers and their feedback through Social Media channels, and then using it to help shape the ongoing marketing message. I am a fan of the New Marketing Funnel distilled by Cohen and Patel, but I would further adapt it (as in Figure 21). The customer feedback should influence the company's outbound marketing tactics, and resources have to be devoted to listening to what the market community is saying about your company.
Want to get the most from Social Media? Listen.
1 Adapted from "The New Marketing Funnel," available from Adam Cohen, last visited May 18, 2010.
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