Stop Talking! Read and Listen

Remember, your brand communications can no longer be monologues. They need to be part of an ongoing conversation between you and the individuals who choose to participate. So stop talking and learn to listen.

This new approach to marketing requires all the cleverness of the past plus the ability to think in another dimension. Today’s dialogue is open. Whether users speak to you in clickstream, transaction or spoken words, they want to be heard (and responded to.)

Similarly, pay attention to reviews and ratings. These are also ways to hear customers – or potential customers – talking to you. You can become part of the conversation by injecting yourself at a micro, not macro level.

For example, say a customer posts, “I received my shipment from ABC three days late and missed my wife’s birthday.” They posted it not just on their blog, which would have been bad enough, but also on an e-commerce review site. A proper response deals with the problem first: “I am Jane from ABC company and we sincerely apologize for the late delivery. We would like to do blank to make up for it.” Then there might be an opportunity for just a little apple-polishing: “ABC prides itself on blank.” What would a totally improper approach be? It goes a little like this: “ABC company provides great customer service. Click here for a 10% off coupon.” That’s worse than comment spam.

Keep your ear to the ground and gather up intelligence by listening in. There are many online vehicles that can be your barometers: blogs, search trends, buzz meters, community forums, reviews, ratings, profiles, and so forth. Ignore them at your peril; they are often the voice of your customers. Call it proactive customer service. You might not have a process for it, yet, but with or without you, a discussion is going to happen. Will you be part of it?

There’s a tremendous amount of feedback available that can be gathered from blogs, review sites, your own boards, or from any feedback mechanisms or utilities you have on your site. It can also be revealed in your site metrics – what the clickstream is, where people are connecting, whether there are any social interaction points on your site or off-site.

You can also do a lot of monitoring of search trends as well, based on what people are talking about and looking for. That’s going to give you quite a bit of feedback on how you can improve your own messaging. Even something as simple as keyword intelligence or back link analysis can reveal the things users are looking for in your brands.