Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Today’s marketing communication professionals have a plethora of tools they can use to connect with current and prospective customers. Whether it is engaging in a strategic social media or PR campaign, hosting webinars or speaking engagements, or pursuing traditional marketing tactics, companies are often evaluating what the right marketing mix is to effectively reach their target audiences. Thanks to sophisticated technologies and platforms, it has become easier for marketing teams and PR professionals to track the success of their efforts and how these efforts have contributed to the company’s bottom line.
However, while we are often focused on the how and what we communicate, it is worth surveying your customers to hear what content they find meaningful and what communication methods they utilize most to learn more about the latest company news. This input may help to inform your decision about what programs or products you should focus on in the year ahead.
Surveys are a valuable tool in soliciting feedback and securing data from customers. They are a cost-effective and efficient way to get direct input on the wants and needs of your customers so you can better serve them. Furthermore, by asking your customers for their opinion – whether it is on a specific product or what social media platform they use most – you’re letting them know that your company cares about their opinion.
No matter the purpose of your survey, the results are only valuable and reliable if the survey is prepared correctly. Below are a few tips to consider when developing your customer survey.
- Know your Objectives. Before you begin developing your survey, identify what your objectives and goals are for conducting the survey. Are you seeking customer insights that will help inform your decisions on the launch of a new product? Or are you interested in knowing how many of your customers are using Twitter vs. LinkedIn for professional purposes? Identifying the objectives and goals up front will help you craft specific questions to capture reliable and valid results to inform your decisions.
- Identify the Target Audience. Once you have defined your goals, it is important to identify the relevant customers to participate in your survey. While there is no guarantee they will take it, you do want to make sure that those who do respond provide you with the right insight. For instance, if you are seeking feedback on a product’s performance and its return on investment for your customers, it is likely the feedback you receive from a customer who purchased the product within the last three months will differ compared to a customer who purchased the same product over a year ago.
- 3. Develop the Right Questions. Just like you, your customers are busy and don’t have the luxury of taking a long, in-depth survey. It is best to develop short, concise questions to ensure everyone understands what is being asked, and offer possible answers from which customers can select. For example, we recently developed a survey for our client Tecplot to better understand how engineers use social media. In the survey, one question asked, “What social media platforms do you use most often for professional purposes?” and offered a list of the most popular platforms (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google +, etc.) for the recipient to select from. We also recommend including “other” as an option with an open comment box for the survey recipient to provide feedback as well.
- Leverage Your Sales Force and Social Media. While survey tools like Zoomerang and SurveyMonkey make it easy to create a survey and send out to your target audience via email, consider leveraging your sales force to solicit feedback from your customers as well. They are already on the front lines of engagement with your customers and most likely have built a strong rapport with them to capture candid feedback. In addition, social media is an excellent way to invite customers to take your survey. Whether they are a fan or follower, they are interested in your company and what news or information you have to share. When given a chance to provide feedback, they will most likely be happy to share their thoughts with you. Consider sharing the survey link in your status updates or post individual survey questions to solicit feedback from your fans.
What are some tips you have for developing successful customer surveys?
There’s a lot being said about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and what companies are doing in the realm of corporate citizenship, philanthropy and social innovation. Today, as activist groups and the media increasingly hold companies accountable for their social actions, CSR has emerged as a key priority for business leaders. However, in order to be credible and effective, it’s important to perceive CSR as an opportunity to better the world while bettering your business, rather than as a damage control strategy or simply a publicity stunt to boost your image.
Companies should be able to uphold their obligation to consider the interests of their customers, employees and communities, while still achieving the ultimate goal of creating both social and corporate value. Here are a few tips to consider when creating corporate citizenship strategies that still positively influence the bottom line.
- Map back to your business goals. This is the golden rule. Far too many companies think about corporate citizenship in a generic fashion. Rather than tying corporate citizenship efforts back to business strategies, many companies participate in charitable deeds in random, haphazard ways. However, CSR provides a great opportunity to both benefit society and strengthen a company’s competitive advantage when the strategy aligns with a company’s core business. Take the female beauty company AVON, for example. AVON’s CSR commitment is also the company’s business strategy which focuses on women’s economic empowerment and supporting breast cancer and anti-domestic violence programs. If you’re in the food industry, it probably makes more sense to focus your efforts around the obesity epidemic or community hunger rather than fixing the education system. Be sure to align your cause with your business.
- Leverage the CEO as the voice for CSR. Executive support for corporate citizenship is critical for a company’s long-term success. When CEOs serve as the face of their company’s CSR efforts, it demonstrates how central social innovation is for the respective company and corresponding business strategy. Executive leaders can play a critical role in building credibility, trust and loyalists, however, to be credible, the CEO’s commitments must be genuine and sincere. Bill Gates, founder and former CEO of Microsoft, is arguably one of the biggest philanthropists of our time. His passion for giving back and creating positive change in the world through the power of technology is engrained in Microsoft’s company culture and evident throughout its CSR strategy and citizenship efforts.
- Measure your effectiveness. Measuring your results is critical for almost any initiative. If you’re not evaluating yourself, then how do you know whether you’re successful? In order to create a sustainable CSR strategy, it’s critical for companies to develop measurability tools so they can run a cost-benefit analysis on their CSR overheads. While implementing CSR measurement will look different for every company, you must set performance metrics and benchmark your initiatives.
Is your company successful in its CSR strategy? Do you have any additional tips? We want to hear from you!
As communication professionals, it is our job to be savvy with the latest trends in social media. Beyond Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, there are new social networking sites that are drawing a great deal of interest. Pinterest, a virtual bulletin board to share and organize images, is rapidly becoming one of the hottest social networking sites and one that we are paying close attention to. We thought it would be valuable to look at the site’s capabilities and how it can benefit businesses.
We first highlighted Pinterest in a blog post about 2012 trends, where we discussed how Pinterest provides a platform for contests and a tool for businesses to demonstrate thought leadership by sharing fresh images.
Additionally, Pinterest can help businesses drive traffic back to their sites by pinning content. In fact, Real Simple reports that Pinterest drives more traffic to its site than Facebook. Companies like HomeAway are using the site to influence trends, by displaying beautiful vacation properties in hopes of becoming part of a conversation.
Retailers, such as Nordstrom, have started embracing Pinterest, doing a nice job pinning fashion trends, accessories, shoes, etc. to different boards that users can share. For retailers such as Nordstrom, this is an excellent way to find out which trends resonate with consumers. Some companies are using Pinterest to launch new products and gauge reaction based on repins. Additionally, Pinterest allows users to track how many pins originate from a website. For example, by typing in pinterest.com/source/Nordstrom.com, you can find all the pins that originated from that site regardless of who pinned them.
Each image on Pinterest is a “pin” that can be placed onto a board and into themes. The pinboards are truly inspiration boards where you can create inspirations for food, fashion, home interior design, or wedding planning, and businesses are catching on. These boards allow a company with several different focuses or products to easily organize its products separately. Consumers can pick and choose which board to follow based on relevance and interest.
Currently, Pinterest is invite only. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, you can’t create an account immediately. You must receive or request an invite from a current member.
Pinterest is still fairly new and it may be too soon to see just how it can benefit your particular business. For retailers, many are already reaping the rewards. We’ll continue to keep a close eye on this site. In the meantime, there are a variety of articles that offer tips to help you get your feet wet such as, Mashable’s article, “Pinterest: 13 Tips and Tricks for Cutting Edge Users,” or “Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network.”
But just be warned, like many other social media sites, it can be addicting!
If you have had the opportunity to launch a new product or service, you know that creating a brand presence in a consumer’s mind takes time. How long it takes is different for every brand. Brand building takes time because you often have to change the prospect’s mind about an old brand and get them to change an existing behavior.
There is a five-step path individuals appear to go through between awareness and adoption, although some people are slower to transition between steps. While this process, the Diffusion Process, was first outlined in 1957 regarding adoption of technology on farms, the steps have been found to have broader application. The five steps are:
1) Awareness. The individual is simply aware the innovation/product/service exists.
2) Interest. The individual wants more information. He/she starts to collect the information related to the product. The consumer becomes interested in product quality, features, utility and price.
3) Evaluation. The individual mentally examines the innovation using the information gathered. After the collection of the information about the product, the information gathered is evaluated by the consumers. Consumers check whether the product quality, features, utility and price of the product are satisfactory or not.
4) Trial. In the fourth step of product adoption, the consumer trials or tests the product/service.
5) Adoption. If the individual is satisfied with the product/service, he/she will adopt the product and use the product regularly even in the future.
Of course, not all consumers transition from awareness to adoption at the same pace. Some consumers –innovators–are quick to try new products/services; while others –laggards–are just the opposite and tend to avoid change. According to the New Product Diffusion curve, there are five different adoption groups which illustrate how quickly consumers adopt a new product of service. They are Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards.
The actual rate of adoption will vary depending on a variety of factors such as the perceived benefits over alternative products, communicability of the product benefits, promotional effort, and ease of use among others.
Given consumers are increasingly becoming desensitized to advertising; PR is well positioned to help drive awareness, educate consumers about product benefits and ease of use, and influence product adoption.
You’ve heard the old adage: A picture is worth a thousand words. In PR, this saying still rings true when it comes to storytelling. Visual assets can make your message memorable, bring complex data to life and draw more attention to the most important parts of your story, as we explained in our post about infographics last year. Plus, more and more outlets are looking for visual aids to enhance stories.
Infographics
In recent years, the popularity of infographics has skyrocketed. Whether they are used as a timeline, as an editorial, or as data visualization and design, infographics can be a great way to turn convoluted or humdrum information into an easily digestible, exciting image. Last year, Medical Billing and Coding released a compelling infographic called “Sitting is Killing You,” and the Washington Post often boasts impressive interactive infographics, such as this one from the 2011 census.
Benefits: Infographics, when done well, can go viral, spreading your story through various social media and traditional channels. Infographics are a great way to make complex information fun and easy to understand.
Downfalls: Infographics can fall flat unless you have strong data and a talented graphic designer by your side. Also, that talented graphic designer will require additional budget.
Videos
Whether high-budget or home-made, online videos are wildly popular. According to a study by Pew Research earlier this year, 71% of online adults have watched videos on websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Even more surprising is the fact that over 48 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Well-made videos also have the potential to go viral, such as the Volkswagen Passat Super Bowl ad featuring a child dressed as Darth Vader – it was one of the most viewed videos on YouTube last year.
Benefits: Usually, creating a channel and uploading your content is free. Most video websites also enable embed codes and direct links to your videos, making it easy for your employees, customers or reporters to share your content with their extended social networks.
Downfalls: Videos can be a costly project, particularly if your company is looking for something scripted and high resolution with high production value.
Photos
Images still remain the most popular and cost-effective visual storytelling conduit. In fact, over 3,000 images are uploaded to Flickr, a popular photo-hosting website, every minute. A good photo can go beyond language barriers and evoke emotion in a way that reporting simply cannot. Many news websites now feature slideshows, as a slideshow can have a big impact with few words.
Benefits: Photos are widely accessible and easily obtained. With digital cameras and photo editing software at affordable price points, it is easy for organizations to create their own high-quality images. Also, images can easily be used in both web and print stories.
Downfalls: Sometimes additional costs are required for professional photos. Also, photo shoots tend to take more time than one would think – proper lighting, a good background and good framing techniques should all be considered when staging a photo. And slideshows are limited only to web outlets.
What is your company’s philosophy on using visual storytelling methods to augment a story?
