Online Listening: Meet them at their Point Of Need

There is a line in the marketing sand called the “Point of Need”.

On one side of the line we have blatant pitches, advertisements, and cold calls. To the receiver, these obtrusive encroachments are usually unwelcome and instinctively tuned out and deflected. No intention or need has been declared by the receiver.

On the other side of the line we may also have blatant pitches but it is perceived completely differently. On this side they are more than welcome; in fact, they are invited. What’s the difference?

The key is the point of need and the expression of this need online.

While this person may ultimately need your product in both cases, it probably isn’t the top priority for him right at this moment; he is busy and has other things to do so the timing of an uninvited pitch doesn’t match the point (in time) when he feels that need. The pitch is perceived as a rude interruption. Even worse, the company making the pitch loses brand equity because they have taken from the target customer’s valuable time and annoyed him with an unwanted solicitation.

On the other side of the line, you don’t pitch on your terms. You connect, listen, and participate in the online community. Then, when this same customer expresses a need, declares an intention, or poses a question online which you can help with, you have the opportunity and also the invitation to connect around the expressed need. Now you are helping and not interrupting.

Many companies have begun to use social media monitoring solutions (disclosure: my company’s product) in order to effectively listen online. While the initial business goals may start with monitoring conversations about your brand, measuring your share of voice, and identifying the communities of influence, companies can also tap into another benefit of effective listening: you can meet people at their point of need.

Because listening in this way is such a rare practice, the recipient is pleasantly surprised. They are delighted that you are listening to them and even more impressed that you are responding to something they said online. There are many needs & intentions being expressed online right now which are lost opportunities because no one is listening. Check out this interesting example/experiment: “I Want To Buy A Toyota Yaris“. Here is another example of how a negative perception can develop when a brand is not seen to be listening to online conversations.

The point of need changes everything. This is why most traditional outbound campaigns – regardless of the product – yield between 1-3% response rates. The timing is wrong most of the time.

This is the benefit of online listening. You always get the timing right.

Meet them at their point of need.

March 27th, 2008 - Posted in Online Listening, Online Media | | 5 Comments

Social Media Influence

If you are interested in the topic of social media and influence, there is a really interesting conversation taking place currently. I posted a few links about it today on the Radian6 corporate blog, PowerShift, in case you want to check it out.

February 2nd, 2008 - Posted in Influence, Online Media, Social Media | | 0 Comments

It Googles the Mind

Human memory still boggles my mind, if I can say it that way. I remember from my University days working on projects like image recognition & computer vision. It seemed amazing to me that the function of human memory and computer memory were opposite extremes. If I give you twenty numbers to remember right now, you might be able to retain seven of them where a computer can store, recall, and process billions of records with ease. It is not even close. However, when it comes to recognizing a face, or a voice, we do it seemingly “without thinking” and this is very difficult for computers.

I remember an experience I had a few years ago. I was on a business trip heading to Europe and I had to stay overnight at London Heathrow and take my connecting flight the next morning. After I landed, I went through customs, picked up my bags and advanced toward ground transportation to find the courtesy bus for my hotel. It was late evening; I was tired and ready for bed. Then in the middle of the busy Heathrow crowd flowing toward the buses, my mind focuses on one seemingly random person off in the distance, headed away from me. All I could see was this person’s gate and relative height to those around him. A thought then pops in my mind which I immediately dismiss, “that looks like Derrick” (a colleague of mine). I dismiss it for good reason. I’m in a busy London airport with thousands of people – what are the chances? I’m from Canada and he works in the Netherlands. Plus he is too far away and I couldn’t possibly recognize him solely from his manner of walking. The thought wanders off.

I eventually find the right bus, get on, and of course I see my colleague sitting on the same bus going to the same hotel! So out of billions of people in the word, in a place where I would least expect it, my mind is able to recognize a person’s walking pattern that I was not looking for and alert me that I have seen this pattern before. Amazing.

Of course, as I write this, I can’t even recall which country I was heading to or who I was going to meet. I can, however, search my online calendar to recover that information. In fact a lot of my “memory” is now searchable online. As an experiment, try to remember where you were exactly three months ago on the evening of October 22, 2007. I was at a PRSA Technology Summit dinner in Philadelphia at the Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum BarI. No, I did not answer that question from memory. I used search.

As we leave our digital breadcrumbs behind through our increasing use of online tools, we are finding that more and more of our “memories” are stored on servers. At one time our use of Google was limited to searching the web. Now we can use it to remember! I use Google Desktop for this all the time. Perhaps in the future there will be digital archaeologists doing “digital digs”, uncovering rare online media to piece together what happened in our time?! (I checked Wikipedia for digital archaeologist; it’s not there yet). And now with Social Media, we not only have the basic images and words stored, but we also have the conversational dynamics and the social graph. We can recreate who said it first, how it propagated, who made it popular, etc.

I wonder where else this will lead? It simply Googles the Mind.

January 23rd, 2008 - Posted in Online Media, Social Media | | 3 Comments