How open and honest should you be with your digital marketing?

Honesty and transparency go hand in hand when it comes to digital marketing. As a reputable company you should already have a website which reflects your openness and willingness to engage with potential customers.

But social media and Web 2.0 takes it onto an entirely different playing field – one where you need to be honest, frank and open enough to take public criticism and respond to it in the right manner.

Life revolves entirely around user-generated content; in many ways your opinions and that of your company’s don’t count for much – it’s your customers and consumers who use you, your products and services, who have the upper hand.

Comment posts, blogs, Twitter posts, Facebook walls are just a few of the headline vehicles for opinion to travel around the web and there are many more happening which you will probably never be aware of – that is, unless you choose to respond in the wrong way!

The secret is to be honest and up front about things. If a genuine criticism has been lodged at your door and you need to hold your hands up and admit to it, then do so and, more importantly, say what you’re pro-actively going to do to put it right.

Honesty is the number one rule of social media – stick to this and customers will respect your principles, and more often than not stay with you.

Domino’s, the pizza chain, used a pretty radical approach to answer some of its criticisms recently. It not only criticised its own product, it comprehensively slagged it off! An unusual marketing approach and one which is being hotly debated by scores of web users.

No-one will forget the Gerald Ratner blooper; but equally, how about the Marmite campaign where the slogan talks about the spread which you either love or hate? In fact, the company website kicks off by asking you to vote on whether you like it or hate it.

There’s no single right or wrong way to deal with bad comments and web critiques; companies all know their customer base and their product and service levels best and need to make a valued judgement on how best to deal with this.

What we all have to realise, if we didn’t already, is that customers are king and customer service has never been more important – the internet means there is no escape from any feedback and it’s imperative businesses have an online strategy in place ready to answer all comments – good and bad!

Dawn Strange
Accounts Director