Your Company’s Most Important Stakeholders: The Customer

A recent survey by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has demonstrated marketers are dedicating most of their time and focus to consumers, thus decreasing their marketing activities on traditional media.

The survey was conducted online this past April with the participation of the members of ANA which include 400 companies and over 9,000 brands.  The report goes on to say that over two-thirds of marketers have shifted their efforts to more short-term, efficient strategies to help them achieve faster results during the economic downturn.

The report also discussed how marketers are looking to increase media spending, particularly in the areas of brand building and the use of  social media.

The activities most likely to be increased in the current economic environment are:
* Pricing deals (47 percent)
* Social networking and word of mouth activities (26 percent)
* Public relations efforts (23 percent)

More concrete results touching on the social media landscape were discussed on Brand Republic following a study conducted by Datamonitor on The Rise of Social Networking and Emerging Channels in Customer Service which does a great job in explaining how the rise in social media use can positively impact customer service and enhance the interaction between the brand and the consumer.

Ian Jacobs, senior analyst for customer interaction at Datamonitor and also the author of the research, made strong emphasis on the importance of making consumers feel they are taken into consideration and that brands actually care about them and the valuable feedback they can provide.

He also mentioned companies such as @MountainView, @WholeFoods and @VirginAmerica, which have all proven to harness social media, which in turn has generated excellent results for them. Not only through customer interaction but also through the use of online contests, coupons and special offers.

You can read more about these particular brands and their social media initiatives here.

Both studies show clear evidence that marketers are increasingly interested in customer care and building brand equity with a sole focus on the consumer. They’ve also come to realize that through the use of consumer- generated media to generate feedback from consumers, marketers can assess the impact of their brand marketing campaigns to quickly gauge brand equity, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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