Now and then, we like to escape the purple haze of high tech marketing research apps, platforms and gizmos. We are in a 70s flow, taking a back to basics trip to emphasize an invaluable marketing tool within the reach of every small business, listening. It is, perhaps, the most overlooked and underrated skill keeping many out of touch with existing and potential customers/clients and prospects. Whether online or off, to uncover insight, to target products, services and content and to build company credibility, get in the groove of listening.
In the white paper, To See Clearly, Listen Up: The Best Secret Marketing Tools are Your Eyes and Ears, LGK marketing strategist Nancy L. Hohns offers a few suggestions.
1. Make notes. Always carry tools to jot down your observations: pen, pencil or stylus, along with your notepad or PDA!
2. Stretch your comfort zone, mingle! In order to observe public behavior, you need to be in the public: places and events where people congregate.
3. Browse the blogs, search the feeds or Google information on a product, service or subject.
4. Inquire. One person’s response may reflect the sentiment of many.
5. Shift your paradigm. Empathic listening allows you to get inside another person’s frame of reference. Reposition yourself on the other side of the desk, phone or monitor in order to fully diagnose before you prescribe or pursue a course of action.
Download a free copy of the white paper here.
In another article, Why Listening Communities Belong in Your Marketing Strategy, Vanessa DiMauro provides an excellent perspective for listening online. Here are four more tips you will find incredibly helpful.
6. Marketers considering a listening approach must beware of the impulse to focus too much on quantity metrics (e.g., number of conversations, articles, or members). A community with a seemingly high number of likes, for example, may not generate the kind of thoughtful exchanges that support a brand’s content marketing strategy. Instead, examine whether your community provides deeper insights, such as a case study worth sharing, an insight worth pursuing in a long-format report, or an idea around which to build a new product.
7. Don’t stifle disagreements, disputes, or complaints. Online communities are an early warning system for product and service issues — and, sometimes, the next big thing that could transform your firm. Redirect or resolve problematic discussions through engagement rather than censorship.
8. Sustaining the flow of ideas and insights from the community is a marathon, not a sprint. A long-term marketing strategy for member engagement should attract new members and reward long-time contributors.
9. Empowering members may mean respecting their privacy and sheltering their discussions from public view — especially for executives, established experts, and others with confidentiality concerns. Creating private peer-to-peer networks can encourage more candid conversations.
Read Vanessa’s article at Content Marketing Institute.
Do you have any groovy listening tips to add to the list? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post. In the meantime, one last 70s trip and tip, courtesy of the fictional band, Spinal Tap: Listen to what the [flower] people say, it’s getting truer every day.
For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest.