Brain Vibe

Want to know more about your customers?  It isn’t hard.  You don’t have to ask anymore.  They tell you. Ratings, Tweets, blogs, social networks, you name it and it is out there.  Communication marketers have known this for years, but market researchers are just beginning to get it.

Research services have primarily created communities of panelists for companies to survey or track their behavior.  TNS’s Compete and comScore Networks have based their business model on this.  While you get to see what customers think if you survey them or watch their traffic behavior, what you don’t get is their Yelp! or the Twitter tweet.

Pear Analytics is taking this into consideration when looking at traditional models like Customer Lifetime Value.  Pear Analytics looks at customer retention offers and how they are being used.  Comparing practices of small inexpensive offers for long time customers over having to pony up in order to keep them from switching they consider the impact of social media word of mouth high value customers can provide.

Blog: The Importance of Lifetime Value in Marketing

“How much is that really gong to cost them (to offer periodic low cost offers over high cost retention offers)? … Let’s not even mention all the people I would tell through all the social networks about how well they treated me, potentially adding several more new customers.”

A known issue with surveying is how reliable is self reported data.  Satisfaction studies and loyalty studies will try to create time references with last purchase or interaction.  But, that may still be allussive to respondents.  A better method to consider is a continued watch of customer activity as new products come out, offers are released, and changes in services happen.

I’m testing out various tracking methods now and they aren’t all that different from marketing activity tracking.  Here’s my list.

• Google Alerts
• Social network questions and comments
• Twitter
• Yelp!
• Blog comments
• Support forums
• Industry forums

Are you tracking customer perception through social media and incorporating it with your traditional market research?  What are you using?

Filed under: social media, Business model, cltv, clv, customer lifetime value, customer retension, customer satisfaction, market research, marketing, social media, social media metrics, Social network, social network metrics, social networks, Twitter, Word of mouth, yelp