When Customer Conversations Replace Marketing

Donna Hoffman:

It's hardly news that the Internet has evolved into the primary vehicle for communication, information, and commerce. But in a surprising twist, today's online customers--as both producers and consumers of their own content and services--ferociously guard their online experiences. This trend, which goes far beyond Web buzz, is catching some executives by surprise and making others more than a bit worried.

What does this development mean for your company? In effect, that its marketers are being replaced. As markets morph into Web 2.0 "conversations" and consumers gain much greater freedom to pursue their own interests, customers are doing things that online marketing managers don't necessarily want--or expect--them to do. For example, they can easily connect with one another, often using multimedia sites such as YouTube and Flickr, so they themselves can satisfy their need for information about products. What's more, consumers may trust information obtained in this way much more than they do information from your company. What will happen when these consumer experiences are much more interesting than anything your marketers have put up on the Web?

Executives can use a model we at the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing have developed called LEAD (listen, experiment, apply, develop) to create a road map that will help companies thrive in the online world's environment of constant change.