Marketing Intelligence: Social Media Marketing Framework

1. Marketing Intelligence-

Definition
‘The process of marketers discovering information about their product, market or business by reading content published by users’


Antecedents
With the lower barriers to producing content online with Web 2.0 tools (oh god I hate using that term) there has been an increase in users being able to post their opinion about products/industries or companies in a public forum. Users’ motivation for producing this content is usually to inform other users about the products and services they are using.

Traditional field of Marketing – Marketing Research
The online field has opened up a new avenue for Marketing Research. However, there are a number of differences to traditional Marketing Research.

1. Public informationThe information is publicly available; therefore every marketer has the potential to reach this information.
2. Easily Accessible
The internet is accessible to anyone with a computer. Therefore a Marketer who wants to do some quick research will be able to.
3. Cheap
This information is in a public forum where it is freely accessible by anyone. Therefore the marketer is only paying in their time to find the information.
4. Buyer to Buyer Information
Product reviews/opinions published online from consumers gives marketers a great opportunity to see how buyers communicate the benefits and disadvantages of a product to one another.
5. Free from bias
The initial dialogue that is published online is free from a researcher’s bias.


Example – I hate Connex Facebook Group
Connex have got a number of sites where the user publishes information about their service. This information can actually be useful in showing what it is about the service which annoys customers the most. Connex can gain vital marketing information from reading the reviews people have published on the Facebook Group ‘I hate Connex’
There was also a Twitter feed that was set up to congregate information published about Connex.