The Conversational Organisation

Conversational Marketing

The shift from Communication Marketing to Conversational Marketing is not about changing the name of some job roles. It requires a complete restructure from your silo of specialities to unified divisions.

The traditional organization is built around a group of silos. For instance, Marketing, Advertising and PR are not usually connected to Customer Service. In the new Conversational Organization this needs to change. Customer service needs to be re-deployed as a pro-active conversational strategy, not as a post-sales ‘clean up the mess’ operation.

The shift from Traditional Marketing to Conversational Marketing requires a restructure. Ensure your vertical silos are joined by a horizontal thread of conversations throughout your organization.

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Designing a Conversational Organisation

Here are some fundamental questions to ask to assist you in your redesign.

Leading: Who should be in charge of conversations? Will you have a Chief Conversational Officer (CCO) or will that role naturally fall to the GM? What best practices and benchmarks will you adopt?

Measure Results: How will you measure your Return On Conversation (ROC)? It needs to be broader than mere revenue. Consider: Time spent; Number of Conversations had; Ranking on Technorati; and Quality of Consumer interactions. What longer term indicators of success will you use?

Budget Allocations: How will you re-allocate your budget? Should you immediately pass your Advertising budget to Customer Service? You’ll need to be more subtle than that.

Cultural Adjustments: What cultural adjustments will you need to make? There’s going to be a few noses out of joint when you make this internal shift. And, your external partnerships? Will you sack your advertising and PR agencies? Be prepared to manage those conversations. How will you know when conversation has permeated your entire organization?

Org Chart: How will you change your org chart and management roles? Rather than a line of silos, how will your divisions relate to each other? Will you have a Conversations department? Will it be filled with generalists or specialists?

Start Here: In making the shift to Conversational Marketing, what are you most afraid of? This might be a good conversation starter to kick things off.

Be warned: Not joining the conversation might be your biggest mistake.

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