Archives for posts with tag: forrester

Forrester Social Technographics adds Twitter users

January 20, 10 //
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Forrester’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff have today released a revised version of their Social Technographics research – an analysis of the different profiles of social technology users.

If you haven’t come across them before, Social Technographics allow you to identify how certain users or segments of users participate in social technologies. As Bernoff explains:

“Social Technographics was carefully constructed, not as a segmentation, but as a profile (that is, the groups overlap). That’s because the actual data told me that people participate in multiple behaviors, and not everyone at a higher level on the ladder actually does everything in the lower rungs.”

The main update that we see today, compared to three years ago, is the addition of the conversationalists ‘rung’. Bernoff explains that this is in direct response to the growth of micro-blogging and, specifically, Twitter.

“Conversationalists reflects two changes. First, it includes not just Twitter members, but also people who update social network status to converse (since this activity in Facebook is actually more prevalent than tweeting). And second, we include only people who update at least weekly, since anything less than this isn’t much of a conversation.”

The Forrester analysis shows that conversationalists are 56% female (this is more than any other profile) and 70% are aged 30 and up.

Social Technographics are a great way to really understand audiences and Forrester has a great free tool on its website that allows visitors to construct Technograhics for specific demographics and audiences (e.g. by country, age etc.). At the moment it seems as though the tool hasn’t been updated with the new data, but I’d expect this to come shortly.

Will marketing die in 2010?

December 17, 09 //
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I like a good prediction post as much as the next person and so I was intrigued to read an article by Augie Ray from Forrester entitled: 2010: The Year Marketing Dies…

In it, Ray asserts that, due to a number of factors (including the demise of traditional media, the growth of technologies like PVRs that are rendering TV advertising obsolete and the growth of social media), marketing as we know it is under going a dramatic sea-change.

And 2010 is guaranteed to be the year when social media has its biggest impact on brands to date. The recent real-time search changes will only quicken this as I’ve already suggested and as Ray states:

The search engine changes mean that 2010 will be the year when brands can run but they cannot hide.  Gone are the days when marketers could carefully craft messaging and then broadcast that message in a few channels to huge portions of their audiences.  Oh, you can still spend money that way if you want to but in our transparent world, no marketing budget can possibly overcome the actual experience consumers have (and share with friends, followers and Google) with the product, service, or organization.  It no longer matters what you say;  in 2010, your brand will be more defined by what you do and who you are!

So actual experience will replace the image that brands want to portray about themselves, especially as we all get more involved in social media and climb up the social technographics ladder (see above). What does this mean in practice?

  • customer service and customer experience becomes vital
  • product development needs to be more user focused
  • marketing and PR teams need to be ready to act and react to issues; crisis management becomes crucial, but harder
  • marketing and PR campaigns need to focus on engagement rather than trying to enforce brand values
  • no part of the business can afford to ignore the audience

Central to all of these is the ability to understand your audience. One line in particular in Ray’s article is fundamental to this too:

“in 2010, your brand will be more defined by what you do and who you are”

It’s a challenge.

The death of CRM?

May 23, 09 //
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Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang has just published a new report, following a qualitative study of the world’s 24 most socially active businesses, entitled The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras.

In it he outlines what he believes as the five stages of the democratisation of media:

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

Jeremiah believes we are just entering the era of colonisation, which I can certainly vouch for.

In the executive summary of the report, Jeremiah outlines a fascinating prediction, which many businesses and marketers would do well to pay consideration to:

“Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.”

And he has a number of pieces of advice for brands, everything from don’t delay and be transparent, to start adding social elements to content management systems and shattering the corporate website.

For me, this is a thrilling prediction (and no, not just because I work in the social media space!). If everything we do becomes social, then it opens the possibilities for collaboration and sharing of knowledge, data and information.

But it also aims a curve ball at the more traditional business structure:

Your customers WILL be talking about you. It is your choice whether you want to be there or not. But surely its better to be at the game and lose then never there at all…

But this is a seismic mindshift for all but the most uber-connected companies. Consumers will ‘own’ brand relationships. CRM will matter less and less as forward looking companies begin to see customers as stakeholders in the business; shaping developments and having their say over important issues whilst they are at the deliberation stage.

Just as the trend of ‘pushing marketing messages’ disappears, so will pushing products and services. Recently we have seen companies that quickly respond to (negative) customer feedback following new product developments (take Twitter and the reply fiasco last week). In the future, customer involvement in development will come a lot earlier.

This is Owyang’s Era of Social Commerce and will hopefully create smarter, more profitable and more flexible businesses.

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