Have we forgetten the power of asking?
I read articles every day about how to create the best content, email, or social media strategy for your organization. There are usually a lot of great points made in these articles too. Many are written by people much smarter or clever than I am, and they obviously know what they are doing / suggesting. But often I find one large tactic missing.
The power of asking.
Perhaps it’s from decades of being told what we (the consumer / customer) want, or at least what we should want, that we (the marketers) have forgotten how to ask. Rather than assuming we know what’s the best medicine for our target, why not harness the true communicative power of social media by asking them to actively participate.
I recently had a client meeting where we were talking about their brand. The name, which had been in use for 26+ years seemed to me, and others I work with, very outdated, and the words used carried a certain (semi-negative) connotation with them. We then proceeded to have a long discussion about whether to change this, or if it was just in our perceptions as the creatives. I then suggested that we create a short survey for the already engaged customers they had. They were active on twitter and facebook already, so creating and distributing a quick two to three-question survey would be easy and hopefully effective.
Nothing has been done yet, but I still feel this will give us a better overall picture of the brand, rather than just from our and the clients perspective.
No matter what the business is, or what your target is, in this day and age, two-way communication is a must. So why not harness the power of your current brand (quasi-)advocates by engaging them and asking them for valued feedback about a brand they care a good deal about.
Let’s embrace the new mindset of inbound marketing (aka not outbound / shouting at people marketing), but also look out to our current customers at the same time—that to me is the grounds for the best strategy for total engagement.
