Here's a grid that explains when you should use social media, or when an ad on TV will suffice just fine. It was born out of my frustration a year ago with some communication gurus saying "everyone should engage with their customers," when that tactic, like a hammer for building a house, isn't always the right tool.
First, look at the arrows on the outside of the box. Information only has two dynamics: the way it flows, either away from you or toward you, and the scale of how many people are touched by the message, a few vs. the many. Once we draw the box showing flow and scale, then inside it we can put the four communication tactics that fit in each corner:
- Engagement: Inbound messaging that flows back and forth between a few. Usually human.
- Personalization: An outbound message pushed to a few. Often automated.
- Research: Inbound information pulled from many, such as focus groups or polls.
- Broadcast: An outbound message designed to reach many at scale.
Marketers have become over-enamored with "engagement" when really it is 1 of 4 completely valid tools. Back in April 2012, I noted the next decision is when to use the appropriate information tool.
Engagement: While "engagement" may seem the most human communication approach, it really is best for organizations that have customers or stakeholders with greatly differing needs and values (this was a concept pioneered by Don Peppers back in 1993's "The One to One Future"). In other words, if you really need something unique, I should engage with you directly; however, there is a cost for me to do so, so I should pick and choose the people to engage with who (coldly speaking) make it worth my while. For instance, a financial advisor with 1,000 clients likely should treat the handful with millions of dollars in their accounts very differently than all the rest, so an engagement strategy in that business would make sense. Chris Brogan is a heckuva nice guy, but he can't have one-on-one conversations with each of the 236,000 people who follow him on Twitter. Engagement only makes sense if individual needs are unique and if some in the audience have higher value to us than others.
Personalization: If your customers have unique needs, but relatively similar value to you, "personalization" is a more logical business strategy. Amazon.com uses automated personalization because the value skew of its customers is not high; one might order $20 a year and another $200, but that's about as far as their values go. So Amazon needs to personalize for millions of customers with different needs (say, book interests) at a low cost. Human engagement would be too wasteful, but computer algorithms work just fine.
Research: Research works well for the obvious pulling of information from masses, or a statistical sample thereof.
Broadcast: Broadcast tactics -- not defined as TV and radio, but in this case really all of mass media -- get a bad rap today. But if all your customers have very similar value to you, and want about the same thing, go ahead and fire up the TV commercials. If a consumer spends a few dollars a week on Pepsi, and just wants a tasty drink, she doesn't need an intimate relationship with the brand. She just needs frequent mass media to remind her to buy it. Marketers still spend billions on mass media advertising because it works at scale, for most products where customers all want about the same thing.
Four information dynamics. All useful. All to be deployed based on whether your customers are really unique in their needs, and if your customers have a wide range or not in value to you.
Not all communication strategies are created equal, but they all can play an important role.