By now, you probably realize that you need to use podcasts, blogs, and other new media to send out your message, but you may not realize that your customers will use them to talk back to you. Not only will customers comment on your blogs, but they will talk about you on their own blogs with other customers listening. And you might not like what they say. You might even need to respond. So we really have to listen to customers now. Marketing communication is shifting to marketing conversation. You might say MarCom becomes MarCon.
The point is that you no longer deliver a message—you start a conversation. And it’s not always a private conversation. Everything you say is just the starting point of where it will go in the new public discourse made possible by the Web.
Sometimes the conversations are public; sometimes they are private. That used to delineate the difference between sales and marketing, but no more. The stark lines between sales and marketing disappear on the Web.
If you want a preview about how this new marketing conversation might evolve, check out one of the “rat-a-base” sites such as DontDateHimGirl.com, where you can see names and even pictures of men that women are warning other women about. In a world where alleged bad behavior in something as private as dating is plastered all over the Internet, you shouldn’t have any expectations that your marketing message will go uncommented upon. Our customers are changing. They expect to comment on what companies say and do and the Web lets them do it.
And you must be willing to adjust what you are doing at every moment. You need to be willing to change your message if it’s not working. You must take responsibility for errors your company makes and make sure they are corrected. Your response to one customer may be seen by all your customers. So you must listen with new ears and take action, if you want to appear responsive.
In the old days, public relations people handled these public discussions. Large companies needed to worry about negative publicity, but small companies were never interesting enough to be noticed by the media. With the Web, no company is so small that they can fly under the radar.
Your customers (or your competitors) can use the Web to give you whatever good or bad publicity they desire. So, if your restaurant was cited for health violations or your products are assembled by child labor in a third world country, you’ll have to defend that. If someone took offense at one of your ads, you’ll have to respond. Even if you are a very small company, someone will blog about the issue in front of your other customers and you will be on the spot. Everything you say and do is public.
So, if you prefer to control the marketing message, you may be in for some disappointment. No one can control a conversation—you can control what you say, but not what your customers say. And honestly, when you have a dozen bloggers in your company, it’s hard to impose traditional message control on even your part of the conversation. Can you strive to be relevant? Yes. Authentic? Definitely. Responsive? Absolutely. But can you exert control? Probably not.
