Week Four - Listening and Monitoring

The case study on Mini’s efforts to understand its consumer’s social media profiles was of interest to me, specifically the result of their study.  To briefly summarize, Mini found that it was more advantageous to use social media to connect with their current consumers than to try and generate new consumers.

Competing in an increasingly crowded industry, Mini and its executive Trudy Hardy needed to find out the technographic profiles of its consumers. The company hired a brand monitoring company named MotiveQuest to research how its brand was being discussed on the various social media platforms.  I had actually never thought about companies like MotiveQuest even existing, but they clearly are important for companies aspiring to understand their technographic profiles.

 It was found that Mini’s consumers are above average when it comes to the Creator and Critic segments of the population, meaning that finding out what these people are saying is of key importance to the company.  It was also found that Mini consumers like to see themselves as members of an exclusive club.  In essence, part of their self-identification was as a Mini owner.

Understanding this was crucial for Hardy and the company, as it led them to realize the concept that they needed to boost their standing among current owners, not use social media to attract new ones.  The company held rallies nationwide, using Flickr to post photos and YouTube to upload videos.  This interaction with owners did not result in a drop off in sales for the year, proving that social media can be used to reconnect with people as opposed to bring new ones in.

I thought the conclusions reached by the company in the case study were very interesting.  Most companies think that being on social media will bring them new consumers because they can join Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to reach out to this untapped market.  In reality, social media is just as important to connect with one’s current consumers.  Understanding what these people are saying about your company, and on what platforms, is very important.