Conversational commerce: why you should care what @joe public had for lunch

Conversational Commerce:Why You Should Care What @JoePublic Had For Lunch

Word of Mouth • Consumers providing information to other consumers via a “conversation” • Occurring naturally, always has been, always will • 82% of SMBs say word of mouth is the main source where new customers find them**Source: American Express OPEN Small Business Search Marketing Survey, March 2011Flickr picture by DuReMi

The Rise of User-Generated Media • Millions of public conversations • Word of mouth amplifier

Merchant-Related User-Generated Content• Reviews / Recommendations (Yelp, Trip Advisor)• Social networks (Facebook, Twitter)• Location-based services (Foursquare, Gowalla)• Local search (Google Maps, YP.com)• Blogs, forums (WordPress, Tumblr)

Why do Consumers Use Social Media? Gregarious Sharing Self-promotion Belonging Creativity Maslows hierarchy of needs

Tweets and Status UpdatesUsing social media to express everything thatmakes you interesting and different • Needs • Moods • Life events (big or small)

The Rise of the Social Media Monitoring Industry• Lots of noise, need filters to find gold nuggets• Monitoring defined as “maintaining regular surveillance over”• Reactive! Are SMBs waiting on the sidelines?Flickr picture by dreamer2006

Collective Wisdom• 140 million tweets a day• 1.5 billion pieces of content created each day on Facebook The Law of Large Numbers “guarantees“ stable long-term results for random events, i.e.• 150+ people talking about cupcakes every day in San Francisco• 15+ people complaining about their wisdom teeth every day in Los Angeles• 5+ people locking themselves out of their home every day in Atlanta

Markets are Conversations“For thousands of years, we knew exactly whatmarkets were: conversations between people whosought out others who shared the same interests.Buyers had as much to say as sellers. Theyspoke directly to each other without the filter ofmedia, the artifice of positioning statements, thearrogance of advertising, or the shading of publicrelations.” Social media enables conversational commerce Source: Doc Searls and David Weinberger, “The Cluetrain Manifesto”

What is Conversational Commerce? Uh, no. Not really.Image from the Take 5: Interactive blog

Conversational Commerce• The act (the art?) of a business engaging in social media conversations• The human voice of a company online• At the intersection of sales, marketing, public relations, customer care

Offline Conversational Commerce Flickr picture By Drift Words Flickr picture By Life by Saje

Responding to Comments Usenet: rec.travel.air in 1998

Responding to Reviews

Responding to Mentions & Check-ins

Leveraging the Intention Economy"The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You dont need advertising to make them." Doc Searls, “The Intention Economy”, 2006

Responding to Intentions/Needs

Who Cares What You Had For Lunch?Your advertiser who sells sandwiches cares!

Best Practice• Real-time, 365 days / year• Authentic human voice (including humor)• Helpful / trying to solve problems• Reward loyalty• Identify influencers and figure out how to enlist them to promote you• Listen and when relevant, introduce yourself. Present what you do. If proper, engage in further conversation. If not, bye!• Show expertise, contribute content• Remember: it’s always about building the business (i.e. customer retention and new sales)

Takeaways• Social media for SMBs is not just about customer care and reputation management• Local and contextual are key success factors• SMBs fit naturally in social media• It’s a land grab. SMBs that are listening and interacting well gets rewarded with increased brand awareness and sales

The Future• Consumers express intentions/needs and get solutions without having to search• Consumers have a better picture of the choices offered to them• Influencers become more important and get rewarded• People making recommendations get rewarded

Thank you!Sébastien ProvencherCo-founder, Praized Media www.needium.com seb@needium.com Twitter: @sebprovencher

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Conversational commerce: why you should care what @joe public had for lunch

by Sebastien Provencher on May 12, 2011

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Conversational commerce: why you should care what @joe public had for lunch — Presentation Transcript