What does this brand mean to you?

Since the name was trademarked in 1903, cubic dollars have been spent to build, support, expand, refine, and engrain the Pepsi-Cola brand in the mind of “cola” drinkers everywhere. It is reasonable to assume that near cubic dollars have been invested in marketing research to learn how effective the efforts to build, support, expand, refine, and engrain the brand have been. The results of this research have been, of course, proprietary. That was then, this is now….

Analyzing the blogosphere.

OK, so maybe you have a budget for marketing research. Most of my small to midsize clients don’t, but larger companies do. Fine. Check out Umbria, recently acquired by the customer opinion folks at J.D. Power & Assoc.

Umbria focuses its marketing intelligence technology on social media—blogs, message boards, Usenet, and product review sites. They deliver data plus analysis of the potential effect of online conversations on brands, markets, consumers and trends.

Hey! Somebody’s talking about you.

Somebody’s talking about you, your company, or your products… and you can find out what they’re saying, whenever they say it. All it takes is a few minutes of effort and zero cost thanks to Google Alerts. Free and easy competitive intelligence.

It will take about 10 seconds to set up an alert for your name. Another 10 seconds for your company’s name… 10 seconds each for your product names. Just enter your search terms, type of search and frequency. The tricky part is the email address. If you have the time, enter your own. If you don’t, assign a dedicated surfer. Ask them to visit the links and report back or forward anything significant.

So, somebody’s talking about you. What’s next? Join the conversation. If they’re saying something nice, say thank you. If they’re saying something negative, say thank you and add some positive comments that might turn them around.

You can also try a customer-focused marketing twist. Set up alerts for key customers, companies, products. If somebody says something nice, send a personal note including the link. If somebody says something not so nice, teach your customer how to use Google Alerts.

Wisdom of customers… revisited.

In my recent post on Tapping the wisdom of customers. I talked about Dell’s IdeaStorm as powered by SalesForce.com. It seemed like a valuable if pricey way to gather ideas and test them out before putting them in the development cue.

At $5/user, I thought the SalesForce solution might be too rich for most midsize companies. But if the idea farming process works, I expected to see competitive options in the near future. Here’s one, currently in beta…

Tapping the wisdom of customers.

In The Wisdom of Crowds, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki argues that “under the right circumstances, groups of ordinary people are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.” So, I was excited to read about Dell’s Idea Storm in Laurie Clemans’ blog.

Apparently, Dell has been inviting customers to share ideas for new/improved products and services for over a year. Anyone can register, post an idea and rate (promote or demote) ideas posted by others. and see what Dell is planing to develop. According to Clemans, “the Dell Community has contributed: 8,949 ideas, promoted 615,131 times, and posted 69,456 comments.”