Why is it important to directly engage with your target Consumer?

I read an article today entitled ‘This Social Media Strategy Falls like Dominos’. It would be helpful to read the article first and you can draw your own conclusions – I’d love to hear some of your opinions. It suggests that the social media strategy implemented by Dominos has been a complete flop, although as a result, Dominos has in fact boosted online sales by 61.4% to £56.9M in the first half of 2010 alone.

Various large Food Enterprises have implemented ad campaigns and social media initiatives in the past to boost sales and increase brand awareness. Papa John’s created a Facebook app, Chipotles Mexican Grill and Pizza Hut implemented a mobile ordering service. These are all great ideas; however, they fundamentally fail to fully support what would be a very effective CRM business model. I will explain.

Part of Dominos social media strategy was to allow its customers to voice their thoughts and feelings via social networks about Dominos food and services, and this has been described by some as “arming jaded pizza eaters with a mandate and a hashtag” This is true, but people are missing the point. Allowing people to comment like this is a perfect way for Dominos to get crystal clear, honest feedback, directly from their target consumer that ultimately highlights any areas of the business that need improvement. If Pizza Hut or any other had done the same, I am certain that the outcome would have been very similar. I have in fact had my own bad experiences at each of them – cold food, small portions, long waiting times and so on.

The Article is therefore suggesting that Dominos or any brand shouldn’t engage with customers unless their products are good. That isn’t the point. What’s important isn’t only the product, but the ability of Dominos to directly engage with their customers to solve problems and get feedback. If a product is bad then there will more than likely be negative comments and sentiment online anyway so isn’t it better for Dominos to know about it and directly engage in the conversation? If Dominos takes the feedback on board, improves the product as the customers wish, then they are pretty likely to go and buy it in the future. So actually, Dominos gain a commercial opportunity from engaging with customers about a bad product by putting customer interests first, and this is clearly evident from the increased sales figures.  Dominos web based activities have afforded it the dual benefit of “driving pizza sales” and “building customer loyalty” by showing that they do care about what their customers want. Chris Moore, chief executive said: “It’s easy to try and attribute our success to one thing – be it the weather or Britain’s got Talent or the World Cup – but the underlying trend shows a more compelling picture.”  Brands that don’t engage effectively with their customers, especially in the places where they spend most of their time networking and sharing thoughts and ideas, will probably just lose them to the competition.