Whitevector: Learn what consumers are saying about your brands
Online discussion specialist Whitevector looks at the importance of evaluating consumer discussions during the economic downturn….
As is well known, the global economy has experienced, and continues to experience a significant downturn. Within this, the minor world of advertising is of course suffering; and within this the micro-world of online advertising and social media forms have perhaps not grown as fast as some might have expected. To understand the situation more thoroughly, it is worth analysing the overall impact of all of this financial uncertainty on social media and the industry surrounding it.
So how is the medium impacted by the downturn? First, it is to be expected that social media will play a bigger part in people’s lives as more free time becomes available to them. Some benefits of certain social media services will become especially interesting to consumers. For instance, usage of professional social networking site LinkedIn more than doubled in a year from 3.3 million users to 6.9 in February[1]. This, along with the general growth in social media usage, will make social networking sites, discussions forums and blogs more attractive from a marketer’s perspective as consumer discussions increase in both quantity and importance. In fact, in 2008, reach of member community sites in the UK increased by 10.3 %[2], and, by 2013, 50 % of UK internet users (21.9 million) will use social networks[3].
Another element driving increased use of social media during an economic downturn is consumers’ desire to make wiser purchasing decisions. Of course, even in times of financial prosperity, consumers will claim price as a key determinant of value, and therefore of purchase intent. But when the economic downturn starts to impact real-life, spending habits become more conservative and greater consideration is given to each purchase. Thus, people will take more time to compare products, and to discuss the benefits and merits of each with their friends and peer groups prior to purchase. Online discussions have proved to serve consumers especially well in this respect.
It has been noticed that consumers place more and more value on personal recommendations from online discussions than on firms’ own websites or other marketing material. In addition, as buying decisions will be made more carefully, brand messages will not play as big a part as before but consumer knowledge, on the other hand, becomes more important. Therefore, the importance of evaluating and understanding consumers’ online discussions grows and the influence of these discussions increases.
More people spending more time online means, inevitably, more opportunities for marketers to exploit online environments. It follows that marketers should analyse consumers’ actions online and utilise that information in their business planning. When it comes to understanding consumers’ use of social media, the most important factor is to appreciate what people are saying about one’s own brand within the specific competitive situation in which the brand exists.
From these consumer conversations, a marketer can learn about his customers’ tastes and attitudes. During difficult times, these discussions also reveal when consumer attitudes start to change. Taking frequent ‘temperature checks’ will allow the advertiser to adjust his tactical activities accordingly, and thus stop him being burnt. For example, online conversations can reveal how price sensitive consumers are at a specific moment in time. This enables a marketer to adjust price accordingly so that competitiveness can be maintained at all times. Additionally, marketing messages, campaign specifications or target group definitions, for example, can be fine-tuned according to the tenor of online conversations.
Understanding why certain brands are being recommended over others is also possible from an evaluation of online consumer conversations. The discussions often reveal which buying criteria are the most important, what are the decisive factors in certain buying situations, and which are the purchases that involve the most extensive online discussion.
For some observers it might be surprising that people talk online as openly, and as often as they do about their previous purchases and what made them make the decisions they did. As these kinds of conversations can be expected to be both more important and to take place more frequently, it is logical that companies should be interested to hear what their and their competitors’ customers are saying about them. This type of analysis is a cross between quantitative and qualitative research.
One of the most commonly quoted mantras in any recession related business article is that the winners of the next upswing will be determined during the current economic period: those who manage to gain ground in consumers’ minds now, will succeed later as purchasing power, and confidence increases. Thus, those companies can make considerable gains during the upcoming months and years. The downturn should be viewed as a marketing opportunity; and many of the most promising tools to utilise that opportunity are to be found within social media.