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Leveraging customers in your online marketing tactics

If the talk of Web2.0 has been going around for some time, the recent acquisition of YouTube by Google for a staggering sum of $1.65 billion or the exclusive advertising deal between Google and MySpace for about $900 is proof, if any were needed, of the convergence of consumers and the media, where the marketing channel is itself driven by the target market.

The era of consumer-created content (defined by Jupiter Research as “user-generated feedback disseminated via blogs, reviews, user groups and forums and is posted in such a public way that it can be viewed and influenced by other consumers”) is very much here and it is increasingly shaping how businesses fare online.

Four recent reports from JupiterResearch study this “pervasive consumer behavior, its often-disruptive impact on the consumer’s online purchasing process and how this wave of consumer feedback will impact the future of all online businesses.” Note the words: disruptive impact.

Below are some of the data from the aforementioned studies:

• 77 percent of online shoppers use consumer generated product reviews/ratings and those who find them useful are more loyal to stores with reviews/ratings featured.
• Consumers who post feedback on forums, positive or negative, spend 22 percent more online than do consumers who have not posted on forums.
• More than 90 percent of large companies believe that consumer recommendations are important in influencing other consumers’ purchase decisions.

77 percent of online shoppers use consumer generated product reviews/ratings and those who find them useful are more loyal to stores with reviews/ratings featured.Talk about living in an era of consumer power!

User generated content: A powerful bait for search engine marketing.

While the above findings seem to tie in more with e-commerce / online shopping outlets, they apply in equal measure to other business-to-business online marketing as well, particularly search engine marketing. 

Blogging, one of the most prevalent forms of user-generated content is one way to create a two-way communication channel with your target audience. Today’s marketing is often about subtly engaging prospects and blogs provide a perfect platform for doing that.

Blogs also offer a very powerful bait for the search engines. There are two reasons for this: they offer search engines fresh (and hopefully relevant) content, something they are always very hungry for.

Secondly, due to the interactive nature of blogs wherein visitors/ readers add on to the content with their own comments, the amount of relevant content can increase in leaps and bounds without the marketer having to expend any additional effort. Moreover, well written blogs are extremely good at generating backlinks for a company website which, as any search engine optimization professional will tell you, are a critical and indispensable component of the SEO process.

Controlling the conversation: critical for PR & marketing.

Public relations has traditionally been seen as a separate discipline in itself that may have an indirect bearing on a company’s marketing. However, the Internet has changed all that, with these two disciplines becoming very closely intertwined.

A fundamental tenet of public relations is “control the conversation”. Today, with so much user-generated content circulating around the Internet which can be found by anyone at any time, it has become quite difficult for companies to control the conversation and preventing prospects from forming undesirable perceptions about them.

Therefore, marketers have to no choice but to take the bull by the horns and ensure that they are not only aware of what is happening in the user generated content space but also actively using blogs and forums to shape positive perceptions amongst the audience. They can (and often must) do this with their own blogs by proactively disseminating relevant information as well as by being vigilant and active enough to set the record straight through other blogs and forums where they are being discussed.

As I have repeatedly said, search engine optimization can no longer be viewed in isolation. Online marketers, whether big or small, have to not only consider the benefits of leveraging user-generated content in their marketing mix but also the cost of not doing it.