Listen First!

LISTEN FIRST!

Shhh… Listen. Hear that? That's the sound of your business. The conversations taking place online and in the marketplace tell you nearly everything you need to know about your company and your customers—what people are saying about you, how they use your products, whether they'll buy or recommend your product, and how they respond to your marketing and advertising. Listening provides unrivaled insight. If you do it right, you'll have a decisive edge over your competition as you adapt faster to customer needs and market changes. Listening is ultimately about gaining business advantage.

Based on authoritative research from the Adver-tising Research Foundation, Listen First! delivers a playbook for marketing and advertising success-fully in our conversational era. This book explains what listening is, how to do it, how it's used, and where it's headed. Done well, social media listening uncovers pivotal insights that guide marketing as well as product development, customer service, and just about all business functions that touch customers and other stakeholders. You'll learn the tools, winning plays, and proven tactics for listening so that you can:

• Understand what customers are thinking, feeling, and doing in their lives that affect demand and interest in your products or services
• Identify threats to your reputation
• See how customers position competing brands in their minds, not as advertisers position them
• Sense market shifts that threaten existing business or present new opportunities
• Develop new products or refine your current lineup by bringing customer voices into R&D, innovation, and concept testing
• Make your messages more relevant and sharpen targeting by directing messages to people according to their conversational interests
• Keep sales humming, even when business conditions might be unfavorable—or better predict short-term sales based on the volume and specifics of conversational activity
• Determine competitors' strengths and weaknesses
• Plan and buy advertising based on where conversations are happening
• Organize your company to maximize listening's value across all its departments

Listen First! gives you evidence, research, and expert viewpoints that will enable you to take advantage of listening and build your business over the short term and for the long haul. If you want your company to have a sustainable business advantage in an uncertain world, it is time to start—and act on—listening.

STEPHEN D. RAPPAPORT is the lead author of The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from the Advertising Research Foundation (Wiley). At ARF, Steve is Knowledge Solutions Director. A sought-after speaker at industry conferences, Steve holds workshops and strategy sessions with leading brands and lectures at major business schools.