Jack Myers Covers Conversational Marketing

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Here's the link. I'm flattered Jack covered this, and even more flattered that he chose to come to Hespos.com and quote some of the stuff I posted here about the Ford Bold Moves campaign.

I wanted to expand on something Jack raised in his first paragraph:

A number of companies are suddenly discovering and laying claim to a form of online marketing called "Conversational Marketing," not to be confused with Word-of-Mouth Marketing. Conversational Marketing is an advance on WOM, say industry veterans Tom Troja and Tom Hespos, who have teamed to bring structure and standards to the still wild, wild West business of generating market connections.

One of the ways we're "laying claim" to this new marketing strategy is in preparing our clients appropriately. There is nothing that could damage Conversational Marketing more than having a bunch of major marketers signing on to try it out, and then falling flat because they didn't dedicate the appropriate resources to following up comments and participating meaningfully in the conversation. You'll notice from some of the stuff I linked to yesterday on AccuQuote's blog that they follow up each and every one of their blog comments. They're also going to be posting about how, specifically, customer feedback on their blog led AccuQuote to refine some of its business practices and methods. And that's the difference. We work together with our clients to make sure they're prepared to participate meaningfully.

Another thing raised in the first paragraph - "Conversational Marketing" sounds an awful lot like "Word Of Mouth Marketing," but we ought not to confuse the two. I've railed against the false authenticity of a lot of the campaigns that go on in the WOM universe. I won't belabor it, but I will say that the foundations of Conversational Marketing are transparency, honesty, human communication, and the Golden Rule. I doubt many WOM campaigns can make that same claim.

We're continuing to talk to clients and prospects about how to do this correctly, so that the dialogue is real. It won't be long before we have more campaigns to talk about, and more success to report with AccuQuote and others.

Today's Spin

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All about my experiences talking to people in Maine about how they use the Internet. The Bangor Daily News has written a multi-part series about how Maine (north of Portland) needs fatter pipes, and how businesses are in trouble if they can't get broadband that conforms to their needs. Of course, this stands in stark contrast to what we're used to in places like New York City or Long Island, where it's easy to get a faster connection at home than you might have at work.

Net-net? Not everyone in the country can access the Internet as quickly as we do here, and they tend to use the Internet for the low-fi connection it gives them to opinions and conversations, rather than for the latest whiz-bang rich media execution or streaming video. We should always remember that.

Accuquote Blog Update

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My client, Sean Cheyney at Accuquote, sent me an e-mail link today to a thread on the Accuquote blog that was basically an open invitation for customers to openly discuss customer service issues. Not to toot my client's horn too much, but it takes courage to invite people to post whatever they like to your blog comments. Of course, it doesn't end there. Sean and Denise Mancini are both handling the load right now, responding to each comment point by point. I think marketing in this fashion is a huge step in the right direction. We have to show customers that their suggestions don't simply disappear behind a wall of plausible deniability, where nothing of value will be derived from them. We need to take criticism (and praise) from customers and tell them how we're going to use that feedback to improve. It helps make the process more transparent and trustworthy, and it also makes customers stakeholders in the marketing process.

Basically, Sean, Denise and Byron have become ambassadors to the community of folks who will engage in a dialogue about life insurance and their business. That community might be tiny or it might be huge. It depends on a lot of things - how interesting they can make the subject matter, how many people are already interested in it, etc. I'm not sure that the Accuquote folks thought comments would run past 50 or 60 or so. It's good to see they're still responding point-by-point. And who knows how big it could get?