Part II

Listening-Led Marketing and Advertising

Applying Listening Insights to Achieve Key Business Objectives

It's one thing to be excited about social media listening. After all, you've probably heard countless people claim that, “It's the world's largest focus group,” “It's practically free mind-reading!”, or something similarly grandiose and unhelpful. It's quite another to apply social media listening in ways that impact marketing and advertising performance. Chances are that if you're reading this book, the role social media listening played—and continues to play—in frequently cited successes for brands like Starbucks, JetBlue, and Dell is familiar, or at least rings a bell, and interests you. Those companies faced critical business challenges that had the potential to erase years of stellar reputation, impede their growth, and lower their level of competitiveness. Instead, this trio of companies adopted effective listening techniques and eventually engaged with prospects and customers.

• Dell counteracted “My Dell Hell” with IdeaStorm.
• Starbucks reinvigorated itself with “My Starbucks Idea.”
• JetBlue put customer service on Twitter.

At this point you might be saying, “But those are special cases; they're big companies facing big problems.” You might also be wondering, “How exactly did they use social media listening to help build and improve their businesses? And how do I gauge the value of listening for my company?”

The best way to answer those questions for an emerging field like social media listening is by looking at case studies. These scenarios enable you to learn from what others have done; they show you methods to take onto the field, practice, and maybe put in your company's playbook. To that end, we researched and selected cases that used social media listening to:

• Generate consumer insights,
• Leverage those insights, and
• Report marketplace results or specific actions these brands took.

In other words, it wasn't enough that companies listened; they had to act on what they heard and experience a positive or negative outcome. Each case we present in the following pages passed these screening criteria. We can look to all of them to highlight how companies use social media listening to create business advantage.

Cases with the most successful results:

• Started with clear objectives and strategy.
• Combined online and traditional media in their programs, with social media an important component in the mix.
• Included a defined role for social media listening—not a “bolt-on” or afterthought.
• Conducted research that drew upon the principles for effective listening research (see Part I for a detailed discussion).
• Partnered social media listening research with other marketing study sources and data—such as secondary research, surveys, and directed activities.
• Boldly acted on the research insights, even when they contradicted their conventional wisdom.

Reviewing the points in these cases led us to several conclusions about social media listening research and demonstrated that it is:

• Appropriate for companies of all sizes, from startups to established brands
• Applicable for both B2B and B2C products and services
• Complementary to traditional “asking” research and understanding marketing effectiveness, and can stand alone
• Capable of providing business guidance that runs the gamut from free and low-cost tools to the most sophisticated implementations (to varying degrees of depth and richness)
• Far-ranging, spanning the spectrum of communications objectives from discovering new customers to customer loyalty, service, and reputation management
• Suitable for setting strategic direction, tactical plans, and in-market actions
• Valuable for solving or handling tough, complex, challenging problems and public issues

However, even companies that actively listen to social media occasionally find that they are working against themselves and may not fully reap the benefits of these initiatives. The case analysis we did revealed a number of challenges that less successful social media listening efforts faced, specifically when:

• Company policies sometimes get in the way.
• Violating research principles, such as listening to the right sources and voices, can miss important conversations and lead to faulty insights.
• Core customer groups were not involved, yielding a distorted picture.
• Response to issues often used outdated strategies and tactics that may have worked a decade ago but need to be overhauled for the social media era.
• Companies failed to listen continuously after addressing needs and concerns to learn whether solutions were working.
• Social media listening did not maintain a civil tone and/or avoid public arguments.

We organized the cases into a progression of brand objectives. You'll see through these examples how social media listening is not limited to simply generating insights from “the world's largest focus group” or to customer service; it truly contributes to all of the tasks that marketers and advertisers typically perform. Our aim is to provide a reference for you and your colleagues to consult when planning a social media listening project for your brand to achieve a specific goal. The chapters in this part will provide guidance on how to achieve the following aims:

• Understand the consumer's mind-set—“get in their heads.”
• Discover new customers.
• Drive new product development and innovation.
• Create messages that resonate.
• Improve products and services.
• Increase sales.
• Look forward to drive business forward.
• Rebrand and reposition products and services.
• Manage reputation.
• Compete strategically.
• Customer care and customer satisfaction.

Each case describes the business objective, role for social media listening, insights leveraged, program implemented, and marketplace results or decisions that the findings helped produce. Where the cases allow, steps in their research processes are outlined. You'll notice they conform to the principles summarized in the introduction to Part I and discussed in detail in Chapters 1–3. When reading the cases, flip back to them from time-to-time for a refresher and for more detailed discussion. Doing so will raise appreciation for the valuable role that listening research plays in achieving marketing objectives and creating business advantage.

The cases reviewed differ in the sophistication of their social media listening; for that reason we indicated each one's level:

• Fundamental: Companies just getting started in this area and relying on free or low-cost tools
• Intermediate: Companies with some experience under their belt that may have a listening toolkit that includes traditional research
• Advanced: Companies with a commitment to social media listening, investment in tools and people, and additional resources

Additionally, to help you understand the type of listening research conducted in each case—search-based, social media monitoring, or social research—it is included in parentheses following the level.

Though social media listening is becoming more widely known and utilized, it is still an emerging practice for a lot of organizations. Most companies are at the fundamental level; very few are advanced. But whatever your company's level of sophistication, all can learn from one another, in terms of both accomplishments and setbacks. While fundamental-level companies may not have the same capabilities, they may see approaches that they can approximate and borrow to improve their own efforts, or aspire to.