In my last post, Getting Over the Social Media Content Hump, I listed all the ingredients of a successful social media campaign (that I could think of at the time). My intention is to take each of them – one per week – and delve deeper in an attempt to answer, “How can this facet of social media be leveraged to help develop and/or distribute quality, highly readable content.”

This week’s topic is Market Research.

Social media is a great tool for market research. You can research your clients and your competition, and improve your products and services via crowd sourced surveys. Knowing what your prospects and clients are saying, as well as what your competition is up to, is highly valuable in itself. Anticipating and validating product changes through social research, polls and surveys can be of extreme value. And these polls and surveys will also develop user-generated content.

This is a tactic that market research firms (e.g. Forrester, Frost & Sullivan, Gartner) have been using for decades. It’s no small task to develop a survey questionnaire that elicits valuable information, but there are consultants who specialize in this.

Can’t afford a consultant? Send an email around to your department heads: C-suite, Customer Service, Engineering, HR, Marketing, Product Management, Sales; and ask them for two or three market-related questions that each would love to have the answers to.

Then place these surveys on relevant sites like Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Twitter, and industry specific networking sites. The answers will give you a treasure trove of information that is, by definition, relevant and useful. The information came directly from your target audience!

Use this user-generated content to feed your blogs, group discussions, tweets, etc. And take another sheet from the research firms’ playbook – every year (or quarter, or month) update and re-post your polls and surveys. You’ll get more fodder for your content needs, and more up to date insight into the needs and wants of your clients and target market.

Beneficial side effects may include tighter alignment between your social media people and the rest of the company (and a new found respect for what social media can accomplish), and a closer digital relationship with customers and prospects. This blog post by Scott Frangos makes a crucial distinction between content and true connection (the kind needed to close high ticket B2B deals).

Alas, you’re not Apple, and I’m not Steve Jobs. That doesn’t mean we can’t pull off highly successful product launches, though.

Due to the tools we have available today, the research phase (which is an absolute must) can be combined with test marketing and some early promotion of the product.

The problem in developing successful new products is not a shortage of ideas, but the expense of bringing a new product to market without any guarantee of success. How much better to continually seek feedback from prospects along the way, and fine tune the product so you know it’s going to be a winner.

Research, Research, Research

Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter constitute mind-boggling tools for accomplishing research on the fly with built-in feedback loops, and rock bottom pricing. Five years ago you’d have to pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for the information you can get at virtually zero cost today. Here’s the process:

1. Determine who your best target customers are. “Everybody” is not an acceptable answer. Be as specific as possible. The better you know who you’re selling to, the better you can custom fit your product, and the more persuasive your marketing messages can be.
2. Determine how you want to go to market. Are you going to produce the product in-house or outsource the production? Will you sell the product yourself or through resellers? If you’re going the partner route, thoroughly research potential partners to determine best fit.
3. Market Research Phase:
   a. Research market size and potential.
   b. Interview end users, resellers and sales reps (you can do this via online polls on LinkedIn and Twitter, although you should also conduct some qualitative, in-depth interviews in person or over the phone).
4. Analysis and Development of the Marketing Plan:
   a. Competitive Analysis – review competing products and how they stack up against your proposed product. If there aren’t any closely competing products, research how else people are solving the problem. If they aren’t solving the problem and they’re not suffering any pain, pull the plug. If they are suffering, but don’t realize they have a problem, you need to add in the overhead cost required to educate them.
   b. Evaluate the product’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT). Develop a Proof of Concept so people can understand what it is and what it does. It’s OK to use smoke and mirrors, as long as you can build the real functionality when the time comes.
   c. Develop an Online Marketing Plan that leverages the unique capabilities of the Net. Successful online launches create a series of interactions with current customers, employees, prospects, suppliers, trade media, resellers and any other appropriate audiences.
5. Execute the Plan and Launch the Product:
   a. Develop online (easily and inexpensively edited) collateral materials.
   b. Begin placement dialogues with the first step in the preferred channel.
   c. Have enough dialogues with enough different entities to uncover any previously undiscovered objections.
   d. Review and revise the Plan as necessary with the new information.
   e. Repeat until you’re satisfied you have market acceptance.
   f. Explore relationship extensions with partners.

I’ll come out with more details in shorter blog posts over the next several days.