Well, well, well… finally some real evidence that smart, Best-in-Class companies are way ahead of the Laggards when it comes to understanding, using, liking and gaining benefit from social media. It comes out of an Aberdeen research survey featured in this CNNMoney.com posting. Take a look at this astonishing statistic:

…Best-in-Class organizations are over 680% more likely than Laggards to improve their ability to predict customer behavior through the use of social media monitoring and analysis tools.

and…

…Best-in-Class companies are 5 times more likely than Laggards to be "extremely satisfied" with the number of actionable insights derived from social media monitoring and analysis.

What's the root of their interest and satisfaction? The report makes that pretty clear, too:

Companies leveraging social media monitoring and analysis tools believe that a clearer view of customers' wants and needs will ultimately allow organizations to positively affect customer satisfaction levels and improve return on marketing investment (ROMI). Best-in-Class companies are nurturing technology implementation with key organizational processes and capabilities, such as a formalized process for monitoring consumer-generated content (65%), dedicated personnel devoted to social media monitoring (52%), and an "early warning system" for detecting potential threats to the brand (42%).

It's 1:20pm Tuesday afternoon, February 5, 2008. Do you know where your brand is, who is talking about it, or what they're saying?

Share This

This is a rather astonishing report from Sepideh Saremi at SearchViews.com. Entitled, "Super Bowl Ads Still Missing the Online Picture," it reveals how clumsy some advertisers can be in leveraging their very expensive broadcast spots with support for online followup by consumers.

You'll want to read the whole item for all the details about missed opportunities, but here's the concluding paragraph:

We’ll be covering winners, losers, and high-level trends in far greater detail this week, but it never fails to surprise us how many of the slickest ads fail to follow through online and miss important details. One advertiser, Audi, had a broken link in its search ad during the game, while CareerBuilder.com neglected to buy its “follow your heart” tagline - and competitor Monster.com, not a Super Bowl advertiser this year, swooped in and showed up for that phrase. At the end of the day, you have to wonder what many Super Bowl marketers are thinking when they spend millions on airtime - not to mention ad production and celebrity spokespeople - and forget to make it easy for viewers to find them online.

Share This

Here's a very interesting item that attempts to itemize the components that drive customer loyalty. Entitled, "The Loyalty Riddle," it is written by Marshall Lager and it appears in desinationCRM.com. In case you're short of time and can't view the link directly, the six factors they talk about are Competency, Integrity, Recognition, Proactivity, Savvy, Chemistry. These factors are well-explained in the article.

Of greater interest perhaps is what's said by various experts about how corporate entities have to behave, and what actions they should take, to maximize these factors in today's online, social-media-driven world. It isn't easy and it doesn't come naturally. But it is possible. Especially if you're able to step out of the way and let consumers participate in creating the customer experience they want most.

Share This