More Valuable Than Gold: SMM & Buyer Desire



Rivers of Revenue: Book Cover“Rivers of Revenue” is one of the many books I keep on my bookshelf. I highly recommend it. In Chapter 3, Kristin Zhivago writes about tapping into buyer desire through customer interviews. In the current marketing environment, the growing adoption of blogs and social media tools make this easier and more effective than ever before. Through Technorati, BlogCatalog, and Google BlogSearch you can identify bloggers within your target market, and by commenting on these blogs, by truly adding to the conversation, you can overtime, obtain valuable “buyer-centric” feedback.

Let’s review a few of the reasons Zhivago outlines for conducting customer interviews and frame them in social media marketing terms.

“(Interviews) Are your best source of information”
If you have immersed yourself in business blogging or other social media tools like Twitter, your readers and fellow bloggers (those where you regularly comment on) are indeed your best sources of information. By actively engaging, reading, and writing on subjects similar to your business, they are in a position to provide you with feedback and, if your product/service is good enough, generate buzz by recommending it to their readers. Iterate on this process in a consistent, measurable way, and in theory, you should meet with some level success. Dick Costello, a Feedburner co-founder, describes it as “going down lots of dark alleys only to find that they are dead ends… …and trying another and another until you find the one paved with gold.” Very simply, the feedback helps you identify and rectify flaws in your product/service until you discover something valuable.

“Will worry that you are just trying to pitch them”
Conducting interviews allow you to shift from hard-selling type tactics to soft-sell tactics. By seeking feedback through interviews, people become lest defensive, and as a result become more willing to provide real feedback. Plus, if they *do* like your product (and assuming we’re not dealing with a complex sales cycle - think SaaS), they’re likely to give it a try. Social Media Marketing is inherently more effective and less time consuming than setting up individual one-to-one interviews. SMM is one-to-many. You write a blog post, let your readers comment, and then just listen/respond to what others have to say. The information gathering aspects of SMM are simply unrivaled. This is conversational media at its finest.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative
Those of us who are metrics based marketers (myself included) would do well to think of the qualitative aspects of SMM. David Harry of HuoMah has an excellent post on the comparison and has linked to a good number of resources.

In my quest to find meaning in the warm and fuzzy world of social media marketing I touched on the fact that quite possibly valuations from other disciplines should be a consideration. That is to say part of the ultimate value in SMM are not being fully realized. For example it easily crosses over with areas such as;

SEO – there are some inherent link building advantages among others from a SMM campaign.
CRM – customer service and relations are obviously benefited by an integrated program.
R&D – the research and development teams can also be enhaced through your efforts.

Given the qualitative benefits of SMM, I would personally like to see a study comparing the effects of the practice in relation to the product-life cycle. Perhaps, given the conversational nature of the medium, SMM is best suited towards the early-part of the product life-cycle while, SEO/PPC/Article Marketing are better suited to later stages?

SMM Megaphone
Steve Spalding from HowToSplitAnAtom suggests that SMM turns your voice into a megaphone.

On the web, the number (and “quality”) of friends you keep, the bigger your blog and the more conferences you attend increases the size of your megaphone.

The breadth and frequency of your use of the media determines its volume.

And your voice, your opinions and your biases determine what comes spilling out.

While that is certainly true, I would argue that the real value of SMM is in its ability to serve as a hearing-aid. Listen to what people in your industry are saying, where the market is going, and respond in kind. SMM is less about projecting your voice and more about creating an environment in which your target market feels comfortable sharing their thoughts.

March 31, 2008 | Filed Under Small Business, Marketing, etc 

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