Entering the Forum: How to Be a Marketing Gladiator in the Message Boards
Real-time Communities. Chatrooms work on similar principles, except the interaction is faster. Chatrooms are “real-time communities” that are primarily conducive to a younger consumer (anyone under 30). Although the rules of etiquette are slightly different (a conversation about body parts and what you’d like to do with them are just as normal as a discussion about world news), the result is the same.
Results. In one of the very first studies executed by this firm utilizing chat rooms for a large beverage company, (4), we were able to interview over 1400 individuals in 7 days to retrieve information on everything from flavor preferences to pricing discrepancies across Southeast zip codes.
In a separate engagement for a large restaurant chain, our firm developed an interactive marketing campaign utilizing chat rooms to create data that we could use to understand the effectiveness of public relations aimed at teens (5). The result offered new insights on a public relations framework specific to this client and target group.
Value Proposition. Utilizing message boards and chat rooms is a very manpower-intensive tactic. It requires large numbers of well-coordinated teams in order to achieve numerically superior results to an ad on a major portal’s homepage. However, the not-so-obvious benefit is a direct relationship with a consumer. In other words, rather than paying for access to a media company’s relationships, your marketing program can become a self-sufficient media company, developing direct relationships with consumers anywhere they may be and directly with your brand (as opposed to via an intermediary media brand) for the less than the cost of purchasing a few ads.
If the name of the marketing game is relationships, of what value are a few unrepeated clickthroughs? The relationship you can engage in with a community and its members is infinitely more valuable in the long-term, outliving the life of any budget, since your dialogue will remain top of mind long after you’ve stopped having it. (When was the last time you waxed nostalgically about an online ad from months ago that prompted you to action today?)
And when you’re actively developing these relationships via chatrooms and message boards, you’re sending your message out to your consumers, as opposed to waiting for them to come to you. Better still, the process continuously solicits feedback instantaneously, as you need it, rather than executing costly research programs that take months and only answer questions pertaining to short-term strategy.
Execution. This report should serve as an informational overview of the best practices on how to actually exploit natural communities online. It is not recommended that marketing executives initiate their own message board and chat room program without the guidance of an outside agency. As an internal capability, it is costly and prone to resource starvation. Further, unusually close alignment with human resources, IT, and marketing is required in order to execute an effectively effort.
Although this tactic can work for virtually any brand in any industry, it should not be relied upon to do the heavy lifting of your marketing program until such time when your capability is scaled to several dozen teams working in highly orchestrated executions. A basic campaign of approximately 3-5 team members can range between $5,000-$15,000 (the cost of paying your team, providing them with technology, office rent, insurance, and administration) and can yield approximately 100-500 interviews or 1,000 to 10,000 visitors per month depending on the target audience and your objectives. Fortunately, it is possible to reduce these costs as your team grows and your coordination becomes more efficient.
________
Footnotes
(1) al berrios & co. Strategy Reports on Professional Business Networking, http://www.alberrios.com/c/org.html#pronetworking
(2) Patel, Aankit, “Static Online Communities and How to Leverage for Cost Effective Data Acquisition”, Consumer Strategies Report, Sept. 2004, http://www.alberrios.com/c/091404research1.html
(3) http://www.harley-davidson.com; al berrios & co. analysis.
(4) al berrios & co. Research on Consumer Product Goods companies, http://www.alberrios.com/research/#cpg
(5) Berrios, Al, “Everyone’s a Punk Rocker – Examining the Effects of a Sustained Promotions vs. Short, Focused Promotions”, Consumer Strategies Report, Oct. 2004, http://www.alberrios.com/c/101904marketing.html
Reader Comments.
The next few comments will no doubt be comment spam…
I’ve tried some of these approaches to market my product but it seems marginally effective. The best response we’ve had has been to underground a “coupon code” onto a deal website.
i’m eric. joining a couple boards and looking
forward to participating. hehe unless i get
too distracted!
eric
Hi,
I’m Gerry.
Just saying hello – I’m new.
Leave a Comment
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