The shift in marketing...conversational branding

Marketing is changing...the true share of voice - honestly, is consumers' conversations. We need to listen and join into that conversation. The goal of our marketing should be to generate consumer conversations - preferrable good buzz, not bad - about our brands.

We need to focus on building loyalty by joining into the consumers' conversations about our brand, helping them out with issues they run into with our products, listening to their concerns, letting them know we are not only listening but paying heed to their suggestions - valuing their input...it's building relationships with our customers, becoming their friends, letting them in as our confidants.

Through a comment from Pete Bradshaw's consumergeneratedmedia.com, I found Brandon Murphy's blog post on the the marketing spiral flip flop which is an excellent summation of the marketing shift that's occuring.

3 key Murphy quotes:
1) "Instead of finding ways to interrupt and disrupt consumers’ lives, we should be looking for ways to attract consumers, offer them something of value through our communications, and befriend them."
2) "That’s a problem for many of us because we’re still trying to sell something to a mass audience. Instead, we should be finding ways to fuel conversation about our brands and to create something of meaning that they can carry to others."
and finally,
3) "The purpose of marketing is to generate conversation between consumers about your brand."

My add to that is the purpose of marketing is to generate conversation among consumers about your brand and to embrace the conversation by having 1) your ear to the ground, 2) your eye on your 3 screens, and 3) your fingers on the keyboard so that you can join in the conversation.