Page 233 - Social Media Marketing

practices that engender in your employees a genuine, visible concern for your custom- 211
ers—you set an entire context for the conversations that involve your brand, product,
or service. Your customers will sort out many of the conversations for you, so that you ■ ╇ E ngagement as a C ustomer Activity
don’t have to respond to every single comment, suggestion, or idea that arises. When
you do choose to respond—or when it’s clear that you are expected to respond—you
can focus on the requests and suggestions that have a large following or which, if left
alone, may generate one. If you can’t implement a specific idea, you can explain it once
and move on. And, if you think you might be able to do it given an internal process
change, design change or similar effort you’ve got at least the beginnings of the cus-
tomer support you’ll need to make the business case inside your organization for press-
ing for the required change or innovation.

This brings up an additional point about true engagement solutions: By connect-
ing with your customers and participating with them in conversations—by inviting
them to collaborate with you and placing in them an appropriate degree of trust and
control—your customers will actually enable you to take up their case inside your firm
or organization. Rather than stopping at the first “No” from legal or the C-suite, for
example, you’ll actually find yourself championing the cause on behalf of your custom-
ers. That’s the point where you know you are on the way to a social technology–driven
business and to long-term success.

Advocates in the Making

Ultimately, engagement is all about driving collaboration and the development of brand
advocates. It may be reserved or casual, or it may be spontaneous and enthusiastic. But
in the end what you are after as part of the leadership team within a business or cause-
related organization—and especially so as a marketer—is a customer base that spreads
beneficial word of mouth for you. Peter Drucker noted that “the purpose of business is
to create and keep a customer.” With the advent of social technology, the objective now
is for customers to create (more) customers.

Looking at the awareness-driven purchase funnel and connecting it to the Social
Web creates a closed-loop feedback path. Cyclical behaviors that surround social media
and the purchase funnel feedback loop often resist definition in terms of starting and
ending points: it’s an iterative process, not a line with an ending point. Listening leads
to innovation and product or service design that delights customers, and in turn drives
beneficial word of mouth that shows up as favorable posts in listening exercises and
social media analytics. Life’s a circle, right? So is business.

To make it simple, assume that if at some point in the cycle customers are
actively promoting a brand, product, or service, then this is the “result” desired. In
other words, as a marketer it’s less about creating awareness (though awareness still
matters and is the right focus of your advertising efforts) and more about creating
advocates and evangelists. Imagine the delight of our fisherman-friend if the first fish