• by Julie Wittes Schlack , August 7, 2008

As the social networking phenomenon grows exponentially in terms of usage, variety, and publicity, marketers are scrambling to understand how to make the best possible use of it. While targeted online advertising is one obvious application, more companies are becoming interested in gaining insight, or a deep understanding of their customers, by engaging in conversation with them online.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines insight as "The act or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things or of perceiving in an intuitive manner." However, most marketers would define this term in a more actionable way, as an understanding of the motivations and thoughts governing consumer reactions, behavior, and/or unmet needs.

Within that very large bucket reside insights in multiple domains. You may be seeking insight about your brand and how it's perceived; you might also be seeking insight about your customers - how they live and what they feel and believe. And whether the insight is into the brand or the customer, it too comes in multiple forms. Rational insights help you understand how consumers think, what they believe, and how they describe their own decision-making processes. Emotional insights help you grasp how they feel, how they perceive themselves, and what unconscious motivations may be influencing their behavior.

Communispace Corp. recently conducted a study that compared three online strategies for obtaining consumer insight. Because a great way to get insight is to ask for advice, we selected a generic travel-related topic -- hotel rewards programs -- and posed the identical set of questions in three ways: by initiating conversations in large public social networks and forums, passively mining large public social networks and forums, and interacting with customers in private online communities. We then compared these sources in terms of the speed, volume, and quality of insights we derived from each.

The quantitative comparison between the three strategies was unsurprising, with mining the Internet producing the most raw data. More interesting were the differences between the types of insights derived from web mining vs. private online communities.

The web mining effort yielded the most distinctive and unique results when it came to quantifying "buzz," showing which brands were being mentioned the most. But while the sheer volume of data helped to flesh out the rational-emotional/consumer-brand quadrant, the majority of these insights still lie on the rational side. For example, postings like "I would have preferred the Hyatt on Pier 66 but could not transfer AMEX awards. I had 6666 points with Starwood so I moved over 2000 reward points and got a free night at this category hotel," helped us understand how consumers think about the brands and think about their own decisions, but offer less in terms of helping us understand how consumers feel about the brands, how they feel about themselves in relation to the brand.

In contrast, postings in the private online communities more evenly populated all four quadrants, providing a more nuanced, specific, and diverse set of insights. For example, verbatims like "They based their status on number of nights stayed as opposed to number of stays. Given that I go from place to place, I have to stay 75 nights at a [hotel brand], which is not always possible, to achieve top-tier status whereas with [hotel brand] or I do 25 stays a year and achieve top tier status," or "I just received a letter from [CEO's name] the new CEO of [hotel brand]. He is the first hotel CEO that has ever (even if it is a form letter) acknowledged my loyalty!" reveal more actionable information about the customer as well as about how they perceive a given brand and most importantly, the feelings, challenges, and unmet needs that might inform the brands' offerings and marketing. Small, targeted, private, and highly facilitated communities have a few unique attributes that encourage the open exchange of candid and rich information, including targeted membership, ongoing and iterative dialogue, a culture of trust and respect, and a safe environment in which to express it.

Marketers need not see this as an either/or decision. Web mining is a great strategy for surfacing common complaints, perceptions, and awareness of one's own and competitive products and brands, and also for tracking those elements over time. Private customer communities add dimension and nuance to those largely brand-focused, "rational" insights. They provide a unique and responsive forum in which to delve into and discover emotional triggers and responses in relation to the brand, and -- more importantly -- insights into the lives, feelings, needs, and indirectly articulated desires of current, potential, and/or lapsed customers.

A combination of active listening in small, focused communities coupled with passive mining of a larger data set can provide marketers the opportunity to gain a holistic understanding of their customers and to track emerging and receding trends.