The age old saying, “actions speak louder than words” is more visible today in social media than ever before. New social technologies have given us new ways to influence consumer decision making and ideas. Once upon a time, your best word of mouth marketers were talkers and gossipers. Now, they are also including people with a computer, mobile device, and the capability to push a button. Social Action Based Marketing is coming more and more important as social technologies become more efficient and focused on what people are doing and less and less on what people are saying.
Here are some examples of how actions are speaking louder than words,
1. Social Sharing Buttons Share An Action With The Push of A Button.
If I “like” a product and I’m one of the 400 million and growing users on Facebook, I can share that I like it with the world with the push of a button.
- Talk is Cheap - At one point, if marketers wanted to leverage the fact that I liked a product, they had to go to the “talkers” to get the word out. However, now, anyone can push a button and it is not that big of a deal. On the same note, anyone can socially bookmark something with the push of a button. Clicking the thumbs up button on my StumbleUpon toolbar and I’ve shared that site with the world, telling everyone I “like” it and they should check it out too. Who wants to write an entire review on something when they can just push a button and tell the world their bottom line: they like it, or they don’t.
2. Location Based Sharing Lets You Share What You’re Doing Now.
Location based sites and mobile applications make it easier than ever for people to talk about where and what they’re doing with their networks. Brands like Foursquare make it easier than ever for people to share where and what they are doing. Privacy and stalker issues aside, location based sharing can be very useful, especially for local businesses if leveraged properly. Seeing where your friends are “checking in” or have checked in impacts where consumers go and essentially spend their money. Knowing that your friend went to a new coffee shop this week and thought it rocked will certainly be more likely to you in the door than a blog post or review of the venue. When it comes to location based sharing, the focus is on actions.
- Talk is Cheap – People are sharing what they are doing, did, or want to do. The action here is doing, not talking about it. The act of doing something or going somewhere has more value than simply talking about doing something or your feelings about it. Again, talk is cheap. You are naturally more impacted by what your networks are doing than what they are saying or talking about.
3. Augmented Reality (AR) Lets You Add Valuable Information to Your Reality Now.
For instance, Yelp’s mobile application allows you to see the world in real time through your social network. Simply use the applications geolocating feature to look and locate where you are and pull up reviews of the exact shop you stand in front of. This not only applies to Yelp’s app but many augmented reality applications.
- Talk is Cheap – AR is essentially taking something that is real and digitizing- hopefully with the purpose of creating value. In the case of Yelp’s AR application, the value is real time information relevant to what you are doing in real life. Thus, the focus shifts to be applied to what you’re doing in real time.
4. Smart Phones and Mobile Devices Mean Less Talking & More Doing.
This is very in line with the rest of these points but worthy of mentioning because smart phones are being used less more talking and more for other things. We can do so much on our smart phones. Applications we download provide tools that allow us to skip the conversation to share information and simply share with the push of a button. You don’t have the breathe a word to Ping someone on their mobile device or share that you are at Starbucks.
- Talk is Cheap - Take a look at text based marketing. Most of it is old spammy news. However, pair the text based marketing with a geocoding feature and pair it with information on your mobile web history and you have relevant information delivered to you via text the moment you’re deciding to act on something. The smart phone is getting scary smart. The value to the consumer is getting the information that is valuable to them right then and there and when they’re thinking about it. You don’t need to do any talking to find out about something, the message finds you no matter where you are.
5. Transaction Sharing Lets You Share Your Purchase Now. These applications literally allow you to set up your account and swipe and share what you are buying and essentially what you are doing. With the set up of an account and the swipe of your favorite card, you can choose to share as much or as little information about your purchase. By sharing what you just bought, where you bought it and for what price (if you want) you are adding value to other consumers decision making processes. While there are a number of startups that have emerged to take advantage of this new model opportunity, two companies come to mind for me here: Blippy and the new kid, Swipely. On one hand, Blippy’s brand focuses on price which allows consumers to make sure that they are not paying too much. On the other hand, Swipely’s focus is to add value to the purchase experience by sharing information about your purchases with your networks. The value of Blippy at a glance appears to center around price and the value of Swipely at a glance is about the transaction itself, i.e. where you bought it and why, etc.
- Talk is Cheap -There is no better way to tell the world you like a product than by sharing with the world the fact that you bought it. With the swipe of your card, you just shared with your network or world. Transaction sharing sites have shifted the focus from post purchase reviews, to consumer actions. What are your friends doing and buying now means more than a review from a stranger on Yelp or blog review on a product or someone talking about what they are “thinking” about buying. Again, actions speak louder than words.
Conclusion:
These trends and new tools make word of mouth marketing less about what people are saying and more about what people are doing, making talk cheaper and cheaper. Action Based Marketing is coming into play as marketers and brands learn how to leverage socially sharable actions to influence consumers.
By making it quicker than ever to share with your friends what you are doing, buying, trying in real time is essentially taking the talking out of word of mouth marketing and making it more about doing. Thus, the emergence of a marketing focus on actions or action based marketing is now coming into play. Perhaps the term we should use now is social action based marketing. The age old saying, “actions speak louder than words” is finally very true. Indeed, talk is cheap. This gives marketers something to think about and a new way to approach their strategies throughout the consumer decision making process.
What do you think? Is talk getting cheaper as social technologies evolve and gain mass adoption? Have the rules of word of mouth marketing changed once again? Are our talkers everywhere now? Is Action Based Marketing real? How can marketers and brands leverage social actions to influence consumer decisions and ideas?
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