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Right now, somewhere online, conversations related to your business are taking place. People may be talking about you as an individual, your brand, a campaign, your competitors, the industry you’re in or the world in general and how your business fits into it.
Time and time again, though, the web has proven to be a valuable, but overlooked, resource for information, as companies try to gauge the true feeling of its customers. Capture this information and you’re suddenly armed with business intelligence that can help find the sweet spot you’re looking for to bring your marketing communications to the next level, or to avoid making decisions that run counter to what your customers really want.
So, what are people saying? Here are some real-life examples of what companies should be monitoring for. Follow the links in each example for the full story:
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“What we didn't get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn't something that came out in the research.”
Neil Campbell, president,
Tropicana, North America
to The New York Times upon pulling its revamped packaging in February after consumer complaints.
“We have heard your concerns about the ad that was featured on our website. We are parents ourselves and we take feedback from moms very seriously.”
Kathy Widmer, vice president of marketing, McNeil Consumer Healthcare,
upon pulling a Motrin ad after mothers expressed outrage about it in November.
“Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook,
responding to user outrage over changes made, without user input, to its terms of service in February.
“The testing we've done has been incredibly positive.”
David Howe, president of the Sci Fi Channel
to The New York Times about its proposed new name, Syfy. So far, a post on Sci Fi's own blog about the new name contains more than 900 mostly negative comments, and has more than 1,500 Diggs.
When Hulu pulled FX’s “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”
without notice, fans were in an uproar. Days later Hulu CEO Jason Kilar apologized for the event in blog post titled Customer Trust is Hard Won, Easily Lost, during which he admitted “We handled this in precisely the opposite way that we should have.”
The post was lauded for its honesty and transparency and was a major step toward repairing the damage done. The two-way nature of influence rather than the one-way nature of control was crucial here.
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Regardless of your listening platform – online or offline – it’s not only important to collect the intelligence you’re looking for, it’s vital that you learn from it too. Finding out what people are saying, after all, requires not only asking the right questions (or forming the right monitoring strategy), but hearing all the answers as well.
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