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Over the last couple of weeks, I have been lucky enough to be meeting with some of our Fortune 500 clients who are finally coming around to the fact that social marketing and all this wacky web 2.0 stuff is not going away. It has been interesting for me to hear these senior executives of these companies ask questions using these “buzz” terms when in reality they don’t really understand the questions they are asking let alone any answers that I could give.
I was meeting with a small group today and the meeting began with a number of people talking about their priorities for their company in the coming year. What they want to accomplish, what needs to get done and they were looking for my team to come up with some marketing tactics to meet and hopefully exceed their goals. I allowed them to speak for a bit and then someone turned to me and asked me a question. Instead of answering the question, I posed a different one. I asked a fairly simple question,
“What are your customers saying?”
The room was quiet so I added to the question. “What do your customers like? What don’t they like? Where areas do they believe you are failing as a company and where are you succeeding?” After a little more silence, someone jumped in and said, “We believe that they are happy with….” I interrupted him.
“What do you mean, you believe? Is this your opinion or actual opinions of your customers?”
I did not want the silence to go on any more so I began reciting quotes that I pulled from blogs, discussion boards and web sites from customers of their company. Some were good and some were not so good.
I moved forward and told the group that discussing specific tactics at this time is premature. We need to first find and understand what people are presently saying about their company and their services. Once we have been able to collect and analyze this information, we then can start talking about specific initiatives and tactics that will address the concerns and issues in this customer feedback.
My point to all this is that what marketing mediums and tactics that are used in marketing programs are really somewhat irrelevant until we as marketers can show and prove to our clients that before they do anything, they need understand who their clients/customers are and even more importantly, understand what they are thinking and feeling.
A co-worker of mine, Tola, came up with an incredibly basic, but truly to the point definition of social marketing, “Taking a one way broadcast and making it into a two-way conversation”…
What do you think? What’s your definition of social marketing?
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Technorati Tags: Fortune 500, web 2.0, social marketing
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Cord,
Do me a favor.
Next time you are in a room with fortune 500 execs and you cut people off to drive home a fantastic point like “You have no idea what your customers think about you”, please get me some audio or video. That way, any of us who are trying to help companies understand conversational marketing can watch it every once and a while and get pumped.
Actually, now that I mention it, I would love it if you would record these meetings and create a weekly highlight reel.
It could be a great viral “transparency” campaign for CapStrat.
The rest of us could learn a lot about how to convey these forward thinking ideas in an impact full way to those who just don’t get it yet.
Adam - Man, that is such a good idea. Videoing these meeting… It could be such a great learning experience for so many people. I am actually really thinking about this. Thanks!
Of course it’s a good idea. THAT’S WHAT I DO, YO!
Fortune 500??
Good luck - I have enough difficulty explaining the benfits and importance of social marketing on online companies!!
I work in marketing for a builder and recently suggested that we start a social network for realtors in our location. They are scared to death that one realtor might use the opportunity to say bad things about us… and so it was crushed.
Jamdo - Keep plugging away buddy, it will come.
Carson - I guess what I would say is that the realtors are already daying bad things, get over it or be left behind.
Thanks.