Integration: The power of a community of owners

Econsultancy’s recent Internet Marketing Strategy paper contains much of interest, but it is what it doesn’t say which tells volumes about organisations’ approaches to the role of the internet and social media in their communications.  The report states:

Almost half of company respondents (49%) said that a joined-up multichannel customer experience was very important to their organisation, and a further 41% said it was quite important.

That means that 20% of respondents – one in five organisations – do not think that a multi-channel experience is very or quite important. In fact, the report goes onto state just 4% of organisations actually feel they have fully integrated all their customer channels and operate in a cross channel basis.

If organisations are still not able to integrate their customer experience, what hope is there of integrating their communications?

It almost beggars belief that even today there are organisations which don’t see the full customer journey through from initial awareness through to ‘purchase’ through to then treating all purchasers less as a sale completed and more of a community of owners.

Social media has made it easier than ever to spread satisfaction and dissatisfaction about brands – from high street food and drink names through to charities and public services – but another chart (right) shows how fragmented organisations are in their response to comments in social media.

Yet the benefits of creating an active community of owners, as charities and brands which are doing it right will attest, are huge. Using this community as advocates for a brand or cause is just the main one PRs need to recognise and build into communications strategies.