think long-term asset
…not (just) ad campaign
Even if your brand isn’t Apple or Nike, even if it’s what others might call dry, your company, your brand, your products and services, can benefit from the life stream of social technology.
After all, a financial technology company that captures unique reporting and reduces investment risk is hardly dry to a hedge fund manager or administrator.
Point is, your brand, your research and innovation, your sales teams, can benefit from the surging life of social technology. The trick, says Josh Branoff of Forrester (Groundswell) is “borrowed relevance” — creating an application that’s about your customers’ problems and then tapping into that application.
Building around customers’ problems means you can accomplish goals including:
1. generating research insights
2. energizing fans (every brand in every category of every industry has ‘em)
3. getting customers to support each other, or even crowdsourcing your marketing
But no matter the objective, the key is to:
Recognize that leader brands create a long-term asset, not an advertising campaign.
Whatever your current marketing culture is now, or has been, seek out and hire the whole-minded marketing talent that gets the value of social technology to your sales and profits. And knows how to put it into a properly balanced plan of action for your particular objectives.
