I dislike the term “conversational marketing,” If your new media consultant is using it, please find a new consultant. If you read it in a trade publication, assume the author is repeating something he/she thought was cool (and then take what they say with a grain of “buzz” salt).
If you are exploring the world of modern media for your public relations or marketing, I sincerely hope you won’t use “conversational marketing”, or worse, shape your thinking or strategies around it. In using the term you may sound very “Web 2.0” but you’ll be seriously damaging your thinking, your public relationships, and your efforts toward perfecting a new media strategy.
I’m not putting anybody down here. I admit we are all searching for words to describe the indescribable - this massive expansion in the reach, methods and pervasiveness of human connectedness and how we successfully respond to it in our businesses. But this term is just wrong.
It is being used all over the place today to describe a marketing methodology/campaign by which a customer can “talk back” or “participate” with a company. Mircosoft used the term in 2001 or 2002 to describe their “speech server” which automated and “improved” companies’ telephone customer service through voice recognition. We all know how well that is going. But, I digress.
Conversational Marketing is an oxymoron. It implies we are manufacturing human interaction. It screams a hierarchy in communications. It practically ensures one of us is going to be manipulated in the “conversation.” And, if your customers hear you refer to your “New PR” or “New Marketing” programs or campaigns as “conversational marketing,” it’s over.
“Conversational Marketing” is not the way to success with your new media initiatives!
Conversation - Absolutely. Conversational Marketing - No!
Your modern marketing and communications is about connecting people to each other. That doesn’t exclude you, but it definitely doesn’t put you or the brand at the center, either.
Friends, your publics don’t need you to structure the “the conversation” nor do they need a contrived invitation from you to “talk back.” They are doing it all over the place. The bigger question is are they doing it with you or without you in the conversation?
If you want to get your thinking around the role conversation plays in marketing, read this article published by Accenture, written by Brain A. Johnson and Paul Nunes. It uses that dreaded term (unfortunately), but in the context of the person engaging in customer conversations rather than as a tactic. While this article is rooted in 2002 and can’t specifically address the much deeper opportunities (or technologies) we have just 4 years later, its key concept is vital in approaching today’s new(er) media and connected customer: “discussions with customers are in the end “polyogues” - complex sequences of monologues and dialogues among numerous relevant parties.“
A couple of other key concepts from that article:
…”technology enables companies to interact intelligently with customers across time.” (my emphasis)
--“Gaining an understanding of the mechanics of good conversation can help business become more than just good companies - they can also become good company.”
…“ good communication is based on reciprocity.” (emphasis mine)
By way of offering an olive branch to those I may have offended, I do understand that the “conversational marketing” term is used to attempt to encapsulate all those prophetic truths about marketing and PR found in Cluetrain Manifesto. But, words shape our thinking as much as our thinking shapes our words. This term is wrong and the thinking is dangerous.