Human nature at the Internet Strategy Forum.

There were strikingly common threads from the speakers at the Internet Strategy Forum at the Governor Hotel in downtown Portland last week. Social media of course the pervasive topic, but there is a return to understanding social is just one piece of integrated marketing. Two main themes most of the speakers touched on were over-arching and human in nature:

Theme 1: Trust your friends

Customer reviews are the most powerful influencers in brand awareness, loyalty, and purchase decisions. Even bad reviews positively affect the conversion-to-buy numbers. (Katherine Durham, HP)

Listen to what people are saying about your product, let that influence product manufacturing (not just marketing). Intuit requires all employees to “follow a customer home” once a week and they use that input to influence product development and marketing.
(Sheila Tolle, Intuit)

The social network is like a town square, and is a revolutionary democratization of content creation (Johan Jervoe, Intel)

Friends trust friends opinion of product, more than companies’ version of product worth, more than media version of product/brand worth. Most trusted: friends/word of mouth. (Sheila Tolle, Intuit)

If content is king, context is queen — friends give product/brand content context. (Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester)

Syndicate all comments, good/bad, from/to disparate/competing sources (Katherine Durham, HP)

Theme 2: Work Together

Everyone needs to be at the table together, no more silo-ing of marketing, product development and business operations. (Chris Dill, Blazers) (Lisa Welchman, Welchman/Pierpoint)

Fish where the fish are: corporate sites need to fragment into the social community ecosystem. ( Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester)

Get the younger folks/social media users into the C-suite. There is a leadership deficit in web knowledge. (Lisa Welchman, Welchman/Pierpoint)

All areas (Ads, sales, direct marketing, web) need to ask “then what happens?” Do not measure your success within your silo’s benchmark. Ask, what happens next? (even if it crosses into another silo or challenges accepted success metrics) (Diane Shultz – Xerox)
So, strategic marketing comes down to very human roots, no matter what platform or technology powers it. The methods by which we embark in these human endeavors may change, but the needs are basic and abiding. I love that about our work. At it’s best, it responds to our human-ness.