When planning your social strategy and investments, it’s difficult to know where to start. Here’s a way to think about and organize your decisions, based on my years of sitting in the purchasing and strategist seat.
First, think about how any social technology will impact the prospect or customer’s “purchase momentum.” There are social technologies that create connections and communities, but the ultimate goal is driving purchases. Evaluate how salient any type of UGC or social participation is for researching, shopping, narrowing, comparing, and building confidence for prospects to buy. The closer the interaction is to a prospect’s “task,” the closer it is to helping people make their purchase decisions.
The importance of the second factor (X axis, below) is something I’ve come to realize after years of change leadership at startups, at Dell, and during the last two years seeing how the right investments in customer dialogue accelerates our clients’ social strategies. This is the depth and speed of acceptance of the proposed social initiative. I call this factor the “cultural momentum” of your initiative, and it relates to how quickly you can build excitement internally, bringing “customer oxygen” into your corporate culture! Let me explain…
