I had an interesting meeting with a senior marketing executive at a very large American company today. (I’m going to have to be coy about its identity, since I don’t want to burn any bridges there, but I can say that the company has a place on this ranking of America’s biggest corporations.)
Our conversation focused on the subject of community, and the executive revealed that his company recently decided not to attempt to build its own online branded community, and instead build a presence on everyone else’s (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc.). The company’s theory is that the concept of community should no longer be limited to a single site, but instead should be distributed as a single virtual population over multiple third-party networks.
I find this interesting for two reasons. First, it goes to the heart of a debate that is happening in marketing departments across corporate America: What to do about community? Second, I think this company’s strategy is wrong.
Building an outpost for your company on Facebook is not the same thing as adding to your community -- it’s the same thing as adding to Facebook’s community. Moving engagement onto someone else’s network severely limits your ability to do things like conduct research into your customers, or get them to engage with your information, or persuade them to take a specific action (such as requesting to talk to a salesperson or downloading a whitepaper).
Conversely, building your own community ensures that users get maximum exposure to your brand, materials, and special offers, and it gives you the best possible shot at building loyalty among these users.
So why has company X opted against doing this? The reason, I suspect, is the same one that is holding back other companies: They’re scared. Specifically, they’ve realized that in order to attract a community they need content, and they are smart enough to realize that content is not what they are in the business of producing. They’re worried they will be rubbish at it, and that their communities will stink.
And they have a point... up to a point. But the point that they’re missing [that’s enough points – ed.] is that there are now companies in existence that can provide the content for them (and yes, I work for one of them).
Just to be clear, I’m not advocating not taking advantage of services like Twitter and Facebook -- far from it. In fact, a metaphor may be useful to those of you wrestling with the decision over how best to use community in your marketing efforts: Think of your community marketing strategy as a wheel. The corporate community (the one you build and host) is the hub. The Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook pages are the spokes. You need both components to make your little marketing vehicle trundle down the road to ROI. [Sound of wheels falling off metaphor – ed.]
I've been working with two particular third party vendors with quite the large service offerings. The one thing that I bring up with their management anytime I have the chance is the need for a customer community.
Brining customer community to a product allows peers to share their innovations, feelings, and experiances of the customer product completely unbiased. This is something that's a quick win for many companies, but due to the lack of experiance in this area they're afraid to take the plunge.
It sounds like the company wants diversification and to see if they can touch a wider customer base. They can always use FB, Twitter.. .... to drive people to their own community. Maybe, I'm not understanding the whole picture. Why not do both?
you're assuming the corporate Web site goes away ... it doesn't... it sits there looming with no message boards, community, or interaction, at a time when companies customers are looking for all three.
One of my biggest issues with company X's strategy is that it creates a sucking vacuum where there should be a community - on its own site.
I don't buy the argument about passwrods, logins, another site at all. Customers are going to end up on the corporate Web site any way. The questions is: what will they find when they get there.
> .. how on Earth they convince their customers that choosing their product/service > is the best they can do when they don't bother to offer anything new, challenging > and innovative?
New and innoative? Yes. But challenging? No. I dont see any reason why Marketing would like to make conversion challenging. Marketing's job is to make conversion easy not difficult.
> And, customers don't like new websites, different interfaces, one more set of link, > login and password to remember? What kind of customers? We shouldn't put all > the customers in the same box. Some are smart.
You ask what kind of customers? Most customers. Some are smart. Yes, but only some. If the smart customers CAN remember a new set of passwords, that does not mean they WANT to.
Repeat the tittle of this post in your beautiful mind. I like what IBM has done with UBM, but not all Fortune500's can do what IBM can. Many good and eye opening points have been made in this thread. Thank you!
The market is obviously devoloping and everybody's trying to find the winning concept. The age old question remain: Should we focus on our core business or expand?
I personally think that all companies will not become communications pro's overnight. Therefore it's more interesting to try to map the awaking market... What are the product lines and concepts sold for different size comapanies and how much money are they using for buying the services?
"But if a company is playing catch-up, then it seems prudent to go slow and learn/listen from existing communities before jumping in with both feet...."
The companies that lead in innovation are the ones that are not afraid of the unknown. By this I mean that these are the companies that jump into the waters of a new corporate community with both feet being certain that they know how to swim.
This is the kind of behaviour that shows who you are, where you are going and what it can be expected from you. Taking risks is always a positive attitude. It demans self-confidence and determination. Something that every good marketing manager should have.
"I'd agree with the Senior Marketing Executive. Customers dont like new web sites, different interfaces, one more set of link, login and password to remember."
I don't quite get this. If some marketing executives are not willing to be part of a world that is in constant change by the minute, launching new information and stuff of all sorts for us to learn and remember, how on Earth they convince their customers that choosing their product/service is the best they can do when they don't bother to offer anything new, challenging and innovative?
And, customers don't like new websites, different interfaces, one more set of link, login and password to remember? What kind of customers? We shouldn't put all the customers in the same box. Some are smart.
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I’ve just returned from a conference hosted by Internet Evolution's parent company, UBM, focusing on the future of online business-to-business, or B2B, publishing (you can view tweets from the event at #ubmobp).
What if I were to tell you that I've invented a new communications technology? Well, not really "new" per se -- more of a modified version of an existing medium. My brainchild doesn't make money, at all, though it is AWFULLY popular with a specific demographic: annoying and self-obsessed people with too much time on their hands. Oh, and it doesn't work properly for much of the time (sorry).
It used to be so simple. Back in the day, when the print dinosaurs still roamed the B2B world, all publishers had to do to keep customers happy in the sales lead department was to include a dinky little “reader services” card in the back of their magazine allowing subscribers to mail off for more information from the advertisers.
Let me take you on a journey back in time... to 1997. I'm sporting my best mullet (second from the right) and working at a B2B technology magazine, which has just launched a "Website" on this thing called an "Internet." The publication is run by forward-thinking suits, who decide in their ultimate wisdom to add bulletin boards to their shiny new online property, where folks can exchange pleasantries "in cyberspace." So they commission a company to build and add the bulletin boards to the site at a cost of $60,000.
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The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
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Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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