Janet Eden-Harris, Vice President, Marketing, J.D. Power and Associates, spoke at the 2009 AEP Summit about how publishers should gather information and interact with customers on blogs, chat rooms, and other forms of new media. Here are highlights from her session, “Mining Social Media for Market Intelligence.”
Using social media to gather market intelligence is about listening in on the conversation. Whereas the traditional method for gathering data was doing a survey—asking the customer questions and hoping they would answer back—new media marketing involves finding people who are already discussing your products or areas of interest online. The power has shifted to the consumers, and they want to tell you what they think on their own time and in their own way.
Consumer demographics—and their behaviors—are also shifting drastically. The Millennial Generation, at about 80 million strong, is in its teens and early 20s, starting their careers and beginning to dictate buying trends. One of their key characteristics is that they won’t buy anything without researching it online and getting opinions from their friends first. They are seeking community input during each step of the process. Moreover, once the purchase is made, they want to rank and comment on the product/service online. (People who share information online are also typically from a higher income, more racially diverse, and are more highly educated.)
Just because your customers are online, though, doesn’t mean you should put up every tool available on your site. You can waste valuable time and money creating and monitoring online resources nobody wants to use. First, post the best information on your company and its products and make sure it is easy to access. Then, find blogs, discussion groups, and other venues where your audience is having relevant conversations. Analyze the conversations for themes and trends, and find out who’s talking—you don’t even need to interact with them at this point. You can find out from tracking this data what projects, information, and tools they want either on your site or from your product.
Instead of looking for your target audience first, you can also scan for pertinent conversations and investigate the demographics on those sites. (This is called tribe analysis.) Your idea of your potential customer could change.
If you do decide to post a blog or a chat room on your site, or start a social media campaign, be clear about your goals—for the customer and yourself. Online populations appreciate rules for the different communities and will adhere to them for the most part. You can have criteria for joining your online group or have boundaries for the discussions. However, just because you don’t like what someone is saying about your product, you can’t remove the post or go into crisis mode; this is a report of the poster’s individual experience. Instead, use the online tools to reach out to your audience, gather more information, or help them find solutions.
If you post in blogs and message boards outside of your own site, be clear about your company affiliations. And don’t make your posts marketing pieces for your company or send other bloggers press releases. Leave the marketing-speak behind. Some companies will also support online communities that are related to their business. Again, don’t make the site about your product. Your goal is to support the community members.
One example is the Fiskateers scrapbooking community site from Fiskars. An initial study found that Millennial females are the largest population scrapbooking, so they created branding and a community to appeal to that audience. Ambassadors were chosen to be scrapbooking guides and experts, providing advice and commentary online. Although run by Fiskars, the community is about the hobby; there is no direct company marketing. Instead, new members are sent a free pair of Fiskars after they join, and all members are asked from time to time to try out new products. In the first 3 months of the site, online mentions of Fiskars increased by 341%.
Bear in mind that you cannot measure apathy online. Blog and online populations are skewed because they are the people who have chosen to publish their views. They also, though, tend to be thought-leaders and indicative of the trends of a larger population.
View Janet Eden-Harris’ presentation.
More blog posts from the AEP Summit.
0 Responses to “Mining Social Media for Market Intelligence”