This week I had the pleasure of participating in the ad:tech san francisco Conference. I joined Janet Eden-Harris, VP of Web Intelligence, J.D. Power; Cindy Roche, VP, Site Experience, TripAdvisor and Steve Kerho, VP of Analytics, Media and Marketing Optimization, Organic in a panel discussion titled, “Media Boot Camp: Know Thy Customer: Hard Data + Fresh Insights”.
We have never had access to more real-time, in-depth data about what customers think and how they behave in an increasingly multi-platform, integrated world. Despite access to a greater amount of data, the consumer has never seemed so elusive and translating this consumer data into insight and applying that insight to in-market results has never been more challenging. For this session, we discussed how we handle key challenges including:
- What social media and user-generated content should you listen to and how can you use this information
- How do offline and online media influence consumers and what are the latest trends in maximizing engagement and activation through the interplay of offline and online media
- What new quantitative and qualitative data-mining techniques are dynamically uncovering breakthrough insights
- What are the emerging best-practice techniques for tightening the connection between insight and decision-making
- What insights do marketers want and need but can’t yet get?
Key take-aways:
In terms of product development and customer outreach my advice would be to iterate with the ongoing input of your site users and measure the impact of your programs quantitatively and qualitatively. Social media allows us to get a deep understanding of our customers by allowing us to connect with them in a deeper level. What education technology enthusiast blog about us, what academics Twitter about us and the feedback we get directly from our student users are the core of our development strategy. Social media provides a feedback loop that goes beyond the feedback email, but in order to effectively leverage social media we must have a cross-platform listening and participating strategy.
