For Interactive Marketing Professionals (Length: 13 pages)

August 12, 2009 (updated August 17, 2009)

Use Online Communities For Strategic Insight

Member Opinions Will Strengthen Your Marketing Strategies

by Lisa Bradner

with Cynthia N. Pflaum, Josh Bernoff, Emily Bowen


Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Community input offers marketers an intimate — and continuous — understanding of brands, but only if you're willing to listen closely to what members have to say. If you're ready to improve your brand strategy using community insights, partner with market research first. Then decide which objective to pursue, whether to keep membership restricted or open, and whether to recruit customers or prospects. You can use feedback to uncover what consumers really want or to design new products and marketing programs. The key is to get your research team to focus on what's important in a sea of open-ended responses: insights that matter to your marketing plans. Research communities will redefine marketing planning, making agency relationships more complicated.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTES & RESOURCES

itemCommunities Keep Marketers Close To Customers

itemTo Succeed With Community Research, First Determine Your Objective

itemSecond, Decide How Open To Make It

itemThird, Decide Whom To Include

itemMost Marketing Activities Can Benefit From Community Input

recommendations

itemSort Through Community Feedback Effectively

WHAT IT MEANS

itemCommunity Insights Will Redefine Marketing Planning

itemSupplemental Material

Forrester interviewed 23 vendor and user companies, including Communispace, InterContinental Hotels Group, Intuit, Jive Software, Lithium, Mercedes-Benz, Mzinga, Passenger, salesforce.com, Scholastic, and Telligent Systems.

Related Research Documents

itemSocial Brand Strategy

December 17, 2008

itemWill Web 2.0 Transform Market Research?

April 24, 2008

itemOnline Community Best Practices

February 13, 2008

Find Documents In Related Categories

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Analyst: Lisa Bradner
Technology: B2B Sales & Marketing, Brand Strategy, Customer Experience, Interactive Marketing, Market Research Tools & Best Practices, Marketing & Advertising, Marketing Planning, Social Computing & Web 2.0
Geography: Asia Pacific, Europe, North America

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Original air date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009
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Ratings and Comments
Rating: 9 out of 10
based on 2 ratings across all roles.
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