Buying a Crowd Sourced ‘Truth’

 As more buying decisions are determined by ratings/reviews/stars, marketing is now about buying the opinion of the crowd. But how?

In the early years of mobile, getting customers was easy and building product was difficult. Today its much easier to build products with global sourcing and cloud. Its much difficult to get customers who rely more on their peers than the marketers. A reference call was a long drawn tedious process earlier but is now visible to all through stars, ratings, verified reviews and likes. Can you really buy/manufacture it?

Its no longer uncommon for firms to offer products/services free for a 5 star rating on app store or on market platforms. Today products offer cash back if you put a review post purchase with a 5 star rating. More likes on youtube video means it appears early in search results, more views and the network effect.

Have you considered these in your marketing strategy for this context?

1. Who are the biggest online influencers for your market segment? What is your plan for them to help your marketing agenda?
2. How genuine are your user ratifications in digital world?
3. Is your product /digital marketing plan ensuring that EVERY happy customer is leaving a digital thumbs-up ? How to encourage that behavior?
4. Are you capturing every action of the stakeholder across the ecosystem? Can you make the right offer at the right time triggered by Data?
5. How much of your cross-sell is determined by Data and not just a gut?
6. How well is customer engagement tracked/nurtured/tech enabled/enhanced/measured ? How much of customer insight is built into the Product design?
7. Subject to customer privacy laws, how well do you know where your customer is online? Are you there as well?
8. Have you considered Product led growth strategy to optimize your marketing spend?
9. Are you nurturing your next generation of customers who are digital natives?
10. How much of your product design incorporates this agenda?

As print/television/magazines/print newspaper/physical events are fading, marketing is changing significantly.

It is more determined by the crowd than the seller. As any cop will tell you, managing a crowd is anything but simple.