How can we succeed in groundswell marketing?

  As we know, nowadays, groundswell in marketing is an irreversible trend. A mass account of companies more concentrates on investing in social media marketing whether they know or not. They cannot wait to get into this emerging market. At this moment, I think you must want to know what is the groundswell in marketing. The groundswell in marketing is a shift in the relationship between customers and companies, which means companies are no longer able to control customers’ attitudes in their product and service. In contrast, customers are monitoring the comments and conversations by using social media to manage and communicate about the products and companies. In other words, People+Technology = Groundswell. Well, today we are going to discuss three viewpoints about the groundswell. How does the groundswell change the balance of power, what are the groundswell fundamental elements, and what are the primary objectives that a company pursue in the groundswell?

Hey brand, you can’t control the conversation on social media.

Before the social media revolution, the brand dominates the public voice, which means brands talk and customer listening. There was no other interaction between customers and brands. However, when social media were emerging, everything has changed. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other online platforms changed traditional marketing methods into a new era. Customers have the ability and platforms to speak directly to the brand with their experience and share with their friends and families. Anyone with the internet has a voice to critic the brand. A brand’s reputation is no longer in its hand but in customers. The brand is what the customers say it is! Thus, the balance of power has changed.

POST 

POST, the fundamental elements in groundswell thinking, is a systematic framework for assembling your plan. The essential factor is “people” because, in social media, social refers to people to people interactions which means relationships; media refer to Forrester Research’s methodology for surveying consumers which means technologies. With the groundswell development, brands more focused on relationships instead of technologies

P-People

Evaluate how will your customers engage based on what they have already done. In other words, understanding your customers’ needs is extremely critical.

O-Objectives

What are your goals for the project? What do you want to accomplish through the project? 

S-Strategy

How are you going to make it work? How can you forecast if it happens?

T-Technology

Based on the above information, pick up the useful tools for your needs.

POST is a critical systematic process for a company involving in the groundswell. It determines a company’s capital investment successful or not to a large extent.

Five Primary Objectives 

In the POST, we talk about the objectives of what are the goals of the project? From the groundswell, there five primary goals for brands to pursue. Listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing. Listening to your customers, the better understand what they are looking for, and what are the previous comments of your brand. Talking to customers by using the groundswell tools to boost the interaction between customers and your brand. Encouraging enthusiastic fans to distribute and promote your brand. Create the groundswell tools for customers to share. Ask your customers to join your product development together. If you want to succeed in the groundswell, these five objectives are indispensable.

LEGO manufactures plastic construction toys for people who have a passion for it, which has outstanding social media strategies in the groundswell. Lego takes full advantage of the five objectives. Lego sufficiently uses platforms to interact with fans, and also set up groundswell tools for funs to post their original videos and share their fantastic ideas, such as Vine, Instagram, and YouTube. Furthermore, Lego has a considerable amount of video content already and uploads it on a regular basis through a vast number of channels. They deeply know that what are the fans' needs. On YouTube, Lego owns 7.99 million people to subscribe, which combines customers and Lego Group to pursue a better LEGO world. From the Lego interest over time, we could know Lego's search traffic on YouTube is very popular.

Google Trends

From the video, we could know that the Lego group use the enthusiasm of people who have a contribution to help them to maintain and promote the brand reputation to build the Lego business empire. Obviously, Lego was very successful and has been greatly benefited in groundswell marketing.  It is an extraordinary example for other companies who want to involve in groundswell marketing to study. So, are you ready to get into groundswell?