Finding the Sweet Spot
Social media have forever altered our conversation with consumers
By: Robert Davidman and Curtis Hougland
With people today increasingly creating and sharing media, marketers are left wondering how much influence they still wield.
Marketers have long been taught that they’re supposed to control consumer interaction with the brand. In conversations with one of the leading office supply chains, we heard executives say their color was sacrosanct, their font inviolable, and their Web site supremely functional. They believed they could influence consumers by representing their brand accurately online and providing quality purchasing information.
But a funny thing has happened. Consumers are taking the information from the site, and aggregators are linking to, reviewing, and often selling, the products. Along the way, marketers are losing control despite their best efforts.
The implication of this shift is huge. Social media are changing the way consumers make purchasing decisions and express themselves — and subsequently how marketers can influence them.
So, what do you do?
First of all, you must understand the interplay of media — how online and offline work together. Rather than simply look at marketing from a traditional “top down” approach, you must incorporate a “bottom up” view into the equation. Look at the interaction between media from a social media perspective as a circle, with fifty percent of what you experience online adapted from traditional media and 50 percent borrowed from the discussion at the bottom.
Also, keep in mind three guiding principles about influence on the Web. The first is that within every community, some trendsetters are largely responsible for the standards of taste and behavior. Often, those people aren’t in your core buying demographic. You may be selling $10,000 televisions to baby boomers, but the influencer may be a pimply 23-year-old kid.
When attempting to persuade people online, it’s also key to first obtain their permission; doing so begins with authenticity. If you “trick” consumers, or in any way misrepresent yourself online, you run the risk of tainting your relationship with consumers, as information travels brutally fast on the Web.
Another component to influencing people online is to participate in their conversations. If someone walked into your store and shouted that your products were terrible and you were crooks, you would respond. But every day consumers are saying similar things online, and many of them influence the opinions of their peers. So, do something about it. Invite participation, which starts with knowing who is saying what about you online. By getting people to actively participate with the brand, it closes the circle to help strengthen validation.
The result, if done right, is word-of-mouth — the most powerful driver of consumer influence. And word-of-mouth is the best form of advertising you can get. This social media viewpoint enables the more traditional “top down” approach to have greater impact. Beyond just hearing something from a friend, there is the need to reinforce the brand message through reach and frequency. The more someone has heard about you, the more receptive they might be when getting an endorsement from a friend. Then, when people see your TV, radio or print ads, they’ll be more disposed to pay attention.
The concept is rather simple, yet marketers tend to opt for the traditional “top down” approach and neglect the more social “bottom up” process, hoping it will just occur naturally. Unfortunately, more often than not, it just doesn’t happen. The process needs to be gently prodded into action with good social media relations and a truly integrated communications approach.
Robert Davidman is chairman and CEO of EarthQuake Media. Curtis Hougland is partner, Attention PR, EarthQuake’s sister agency devoted to social media. They can be reached at rob@earthquakemedia.com and curtis@earthquakemedia.com.