Business Solutions

Let’s face it. Marketing, public relations, and corporate communications, are traditionally all about talking and more talking. Of course, quite often we were driven to do so by whatever new product we happen to be launching, and depended on the product development department to perform the necessary due diligence before creating and making the company’s announcement of the next big thing. At that time we determined our position and approach centered on exactly what we clearly established our market niche or audience wanted to hear in the message, created and shaped our story and released our great message for eager market niche audiences to take in, always hopeful that we hit the target and achieved the desired results.

The greatest benefit of the new media communication environment is the way it eliminates conjecture and guessing from the equation. There’s no call for trying to imagine what people are processing and thinking anymore. Leads, prospects, shareholders, customers, and consumers in general will tell you just what they think, believe and ultimately what they want to know.

It is becoming quite evident that social media offers some of the best research tools anyone could ask for. Consider that you can listen in on exactly what people are saying about your business, your industry, your products, and better yet, your competition. You can determine exactly what they’re responding to as well as sharing. So then the obvious question becomes, “Why not use this open forum to equip ourselves with market engagement strategies that work?”

With that said, you may have wondered why “Listening” before “Planning.” While the traditional method always starts with planning, in today’s new social media environment, it is vitally important to listen first, learn and then prepare a better informed and strategically effective market engagement plan.

Understand that except you begin first by listening and continue to listen, even the most brilliant ideas for audience engagement will be based on absolutely nothing certain (uncertainty is anathema to business marketing success). You may get lucky and hit the right message but the odds are you’re just as likely to miss the target altogether. Instead of the traditional “hit or miss,” by listening carefully, you can determine exactly the content, along with experiences and interactions people in your market target segment or niche actually need and want. All that’s left for you to do is just create and deliver on “it,” and people will respond honestly with, “That’s exactly what I was looking for!”