For this week, I will be discussing the POST method which is a four-step planning process to use for building your groundswell strategy.
Source: http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2007/12/the-post-method.html
People – Company should always focus and value their people/customers so that companies could see exactly what their customers want to meet their needs. Company should have a tool to see how and why their customers engage when buying their products/services, who and what age group does the people belong to, and to determine which type of groups of people that buys and research companies products whether it’s from friends and family, advertisement, or online (Forums, blogs, & more). We’ve discussed about this before on my previous post called “Targeting the right people” where I gave an example of Nintendo of how much people there were ranging from the age of 18-24 in Canada in specific groups (Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives). By knowing all of this a company can connect and engage with their customers.
Objectives – In this section, this is where the company should focus on what their goals/objectives are. A few questions could be asked are “Are you more interested in talking with groundswell for marketing?” or “In generating sales by energizing your best customers?” Or are you interested in tapping the groundswell internally to help your employees work together more efficiently?” (groundswell, 2011, p. 67-68). I will go into more detail of the five different objectives later on.
Strategy – This is where a company determines their strategy. This is where you ask yourself what does your company want to do? Do you want to have an relationship with your customers or maybe you want the relationship to change? Or maybe you want the customers to be more engaging with your company? After answering some of these questions, your company should be able to focus all their efforts and desires for change and then you can measure your success after. This way you can test if your strategy and methods are working effectively or not and adjust accordingly if something is wrong.
Technology – For the final process, this is where everything are decided from which people you want to target, what objectives your company is aiming for, and what strategies to use to reach those objectives. You can then choose to either buy or make your own application so that you can pick what technologies to use them for such as “blogs, wikis, social networks and many more” (groundswell, 2011, p. 68). There was an example from my previous post where Nintendo uses Nintendo Direct and E3 for anyone that comes to watch it directly or they stream it LIVE on streaming sites such as YouTube & uStream to engage with their customers. Nintendo uses the groundswell to keep customers updated with their new games and services while gathering data as to how much people were watching their video, how many likes, and reading comments so they can plan for their future videos.
To clarify with Objectives mentioned earlier, these are the five primary objectives a company should choose from to best suit their needs:
1. Listening – This is where company should use the groundswell to research their customers and understanding them. So basically, a goal for this is best suited for companies that looks for feedback, suggestions, and criticism from customers to use for their marketing and developments. (groundswell, 2011, p. 68)
2. Talking – For this objective, this is where you spread messages about what your company does (Sell products & providing services). So choose this when you want to further reach out to your customers other than using banner ads, search ads, emails & etc. (groundswell, 2011, p. 68)
3. Energizing – This is where you find your most energized customers and then using groundswell for the customers and power up their word of mouth and spreading them. What this means is that when someone or a customer who is enthusiastic about their favorite brand of product or service, they could talk for hours about it. So using groundswell and finding these people and providing new updates on products, services, and etc could energize these people which in turn the people would spread the news to others very fast.
4. Supporting – This is a objective where using groundswell to help your customers support each other. “This is effective for companies with significant support costs and customers who have a natural affinity for each other” (groundswell, 2011, pg. 69). I believe what this means is that setting up good customer services to help your customers when needed and also if their are blogs, forums, or any online discussion boards and customers can also help other customers as well if they have already encountered a problem before and the company had already fixed it for them, so a chain of supporting each other is also another good goal for a company.
5. Embracing – The last goal is hard and challenging goal for most companies because it does require the four goals/objectives prior to this. This is where you get your customers to help you design your products/services by integrating them to your business. So communication and the customers are key for this goal. This is to ensure that you have listened to the customers exactly what they want, spreading it to others so that they know that it’s being developed, showing the customers the design and development so that the enthusiastic people and other customers can spread their brand to even more people that may not heard of them before, and finally to support each other through donations, ideas, and suggestions.
These five objectives is like a business function in your company but it is more engaging with the customers through communication with groundswell.
So another question of the week:
“What are your company’s goals objectives?”
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