Listening to consumers can be cheap marketing
Imagine for a moment that you are a brand manager in this current uncertain economic time. It’s pretty unlikely that your budget has been raised for 2009. Things are looking pretty down. How can you do anything right now?
Part of the answer is to think like small business or startup. Use resources that are cheap or free that can still tell you about what people think of your produce.
Go to google or yahoo. Search for your brand and the word “sucks.” Compare that to your competitors. “McDonalds Sucks” gives 1.77M pages, while “Burger king sucks“ delivers about 700K. Your detractors may not be eloquent, but its likely thay have something interesting to say and have taken the time to do so in a very public forum. If you find one or two insights out of a search engine tour, you’ve just saved the $50K you might have spent on a formal market research report to tell you the same thing.
I will say it takes a bit of a strong stomach to endure the vitriol of so many angry customers, but in the end it will make you and your brand better in the long run.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:35 am
I just wanted to say good work on your site, I like the look and the information was useful.