Capture Mindshare in a Time-Starved World
Users who choose to interact are your most involved visitors. Make the most of the consumer engagement relationship.
Users who choose to interact are your most involved visitors. Make the most of the consumer engagement relationship.
The current focus on consumer-generated media (CGM) and word-of-mouth campaigns underscores the need to engage consumers and provide a forum for two-way communication.
This is nothing new. Bulletin boards and chat rooms have existed since the Internet’s early days. What’s new is the potential pool of participants extends well beyond early tech adopters, with the Web’s current pervasiveness.
Cultivating and leveraging consumer sentiment can help guide your company’s strategy and image and generate revenue. Finding passionately involved users who seek interaction with your company and giving them an outlet for their interest enables you to be at the center of the conversation in your marketplace.
Consider the value of participant attention in today’s time-strapped world. In a fragmented media environment, where breaking through the clutter is a costly marketing challenge, these consumers voluntarily choose to spend time communicating with you to share their perspectives and insights.
Examples of sites that empower consumer participation include:
In today’s connected, consumer-driven environment, if you don’t give consumers a forum in which you’re responsive to them, they’ll find other means. Consider how Jeff Jarvis’s issues with Dell, outlined in his blog, percolated across the blogosphere. Rather than ignore postings by a single, but very influential, commentator such as Jarvis, Dell’s marketing and customer service areas should track company-related buzz and respond quickly to neutralize such complaints.
Online forums enable marketers to initiate dialogues with current customers, prospects, investors, the press, and others. To connect with target consumers, organizations must provide forums for like-minded individuals where they can come together for reasons that meet their needs (not yours). Useful information and a conduit to facilitate conversations between participants, as well as between your company and consumers, are important.
Discussions can take a variety of formats, including consumer postings, expert engagement, special customer sections, bulletin boards, chats, blogs, and Webinars. You can do this on your site or sponsor online community venues targeting your audience.
Extend existing forums to engage consumers. Make blogs outwardly focused to connect with readers and encourage postings. Webinars, often used to educate users about a topic, can also be used as forums. I’m surprised more media companies with high-visibility columnists don’t create forums in which readers can interact with these personalities to generate revenues. At a minimum, ask users for input and comments on every page of your site.
Challenges of engaging users include determining how open the forum should be and the extent to which participation and content should be moderated.
Consumer engagement forums do the following:
Determine whether you want to engage with all your consumers or only specific segments. Then, consider how to drive targeted users to a dedicated area of your site. At a minimum, cross-promote the functionality on site, in footers, and in email. Important events can be publicized with RSS (define) feeds. Remember to add registration, email-a-friend, and feedback functionality.
To measure the strategy’s outcome, analyze the following:
Consider how to engage consumers on your site to extend your relationship with them. This can be a great source of consumer input, helping give direction to your site and your marketing. The users who choose to interact with you are among your most involved visitors. Learn how to make the most of the relationship.