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May 18, 2011Making Britain more enterprising – Interview with Duncan Cheatle
May 31, 2011
Earlier this year (Feb 2011) the IBM Institute for Business Value published a new piece of research: From social media to Social CRM: What customers want. The study aimed to investigation how companies were integrating social media into their marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) strategies and what was the effect on their efforts to build better relationships with their customers.
Some of the results were really interesting, although not surprising. The first chart shows that the majority of customers use social media….to be social and connect with their friends and family (70%). No surprises there.
But, it also shows that only 23% are using social media to interact with businesses or brands. Surprising?
However, drilling down into the reasons why customers do interact with companies via social media sites showed a discrepancy in thinking from marketers inside business versus what customers really want and why they want to interact. Check out the following chart:
Interesting? Are you in danger of spending money on initiatives that are failing or not getting the traction that you would like and are wondering why? Are you really listening to your customers and giving them what they want?
In this world where there is so much choice and where the customer is in control, the research shows that, increasingly, customers are more concerned with ‘what’s in it for me’ in terms of value rather than information or giving you feedback about what they think about your product or service.
It’s the same situation that seems to exist when it comes to customer satisfaction surveying (I wrote/ranted about this earlier in Do customer surveys do more harm than good? and Customer surveys, low response rates and staff targets) where many surveys are asked from the company’s perspective rather than the customers.
The danger seems to be that businesses and brands are in danger of making assumptions about the sort of relationships that they have with their customers and the sort of relationships they could have with their customers.
That’s not to say that customers won’t engage with you in the social sphere. Some may but most won’t. The ones that might need to feel passionate about you, your product or service before they will engage. The challenge is to find them and to start talking to them.
But, be realistic about the nature of the engagement that you can build with respect to your business.
Start small. Find those that are or could be passionate about your brand, understand (don’t guess) why they would want to engage with you on a social site, find out what they want, and start to build the relationship slowly. This is not a one-night stand this should be the start of a beautiful thing.
Do that and over time the insights and advocacy from your engaged customers will grow and your relationships will get better.
Thanks to sonson for the image.
13 Comments
Hey Adrian,
Social media is a great way to connect with customers, but only if you do it for their sakes.
I am working for a gym chain here in Norway to help them create an efficient marketing plan. We will be using social media but we will be giving a lot and asking for very, very little in return.
We hope the customers connect with the personalities in the company and thereby with the company itself.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for your comment. You are absolutely right that in order to engage we need to do things for our customers sakes and not our own. Can you tell us what sort of things you will be doing? And, do you believe that in doing these things you’ll build better relationships with customers and the permission to engage them further?
Adrian
Hey Adrian,
Pretty insightful post I must say. You are absolutely right, it’s all about building those relationships. There are so many social media platforms out where you see people only talking about themselves and promoting their own brand/services. While it may seem like a good idea, it doesn’t last very long. It’s always good to reach out to people and start forming connections and showing recognition to others.
Hey Vitaly,
Thanks for dropping by and for your kind words. You are right that may people resort to ‘broadcast’ tactics because it seems like a good idea at the time but it’s no way to build a sustainable relationship. Showing recognition is a great way to start changing that.
Adrian
Hi Adrian
Marketers and their assumptions – the mother of all mess ups. What makes it worse is these assumptions get translated into huge advertising spend and is lost down the river.
I am a big fan of the Blue Ocean strategy thinking. As a marketer I think that it adds a lot of value to business. One of the keys is the strategic canvas, which often shows business’s how out of touch they are with heir customers. The assumptions that are made are a mess. Your post just highlights how poorly marketers have adapted to these new social tools
It assumes that customers are dumb beasts that will just accept what they have to offer.
Good work Adrian.
Cheers
Michael
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your comment.
Making assumptions can be dangerous and, as you point out, waste a lot of money. Nothing replaces really talking and listening, eh?
By the way, what is ‘Blue Ocean strategy thinking’? I haven’t heard of it before. Is it a process/book or something fishy? 😉
Adrian
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