An article written by Susan Fournier and Bob Rietveld reveals that social listening is more important than it seems. Like many issues in PR, businesses would like to see their issues managed before they become crises.
Bob and Susan praise the notion of social listening and how it can pre-emptively save a product from certain failure when it hits the market. The electronic razor company mentioned in this article used social listening to change up their product to suit the specifications of their social media audience. A great idea… This method is worth a try. By listening in on their community, the company created a product knowing that their audience would enjoy leading to ROI.
Isolating values and using econometric models to calculate ROI in social media can be a tall order and some may already have achieved such a feat. However, in statistics, there are always outliers and anomalies that may not fit in with the standard deviation. To increase accuracy to a profitable outcome, at least to companies in the B2C sector, we must first look at the stats and conduct research before a product is introduced to the market.
I suggest the following steps to be aware of in order to achieve a profitable campaign:
Step 1
Research, research, research. Susan and Bob mentions in their article that social listening is an effective way in knowing what your customers want. I agree. And so as part of market research, use surveys and questions to scope out what customers want. This of course is coupled with traditional market research prior to product launches
Step 2
Implement a product created by the customers – they are always right. They are the ones with power. No longer are you able to introduce a product and expect your customers to like it (Apple is not an exception). Although they did really well with the introduction of the iPod, eventually Google and Samsung caught up customer demands and are now competing with Apple for their share of the market.
Step 3
Measure the outcome and compare it to case studies. A good way to know if your campaign is working is to eliminate as many variables as possible. This could be Facebook advertising that targets the same age group or the same demographics. Regardless of how big or small the campaign would be, it is always beneficial to use analytical tools such as Google Analytics and Radian 6 to measure the outcome of a campaign.
Step 4
A lot of people measure ROI but do not discuss improvements that can be made to the existing campaign. This is very important as the goal of any marketing campaign is to exceed the success of at least the previous campaign.
ROI can be very elusive if not thought about it correctly. With the right mindset and determination, even if proper ROI cannot be calculated, profits can be predicted with many campaigns in B2C businesses.
Source: Harvard Business Review
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