A marketer focuses majority of media spending on awareness — where it drives demand. And at point-of-sale, affirming pending purchases or shifting them from a competing brand. Under-utilized by too many marketers has been the consideration process through which consumers evaluate purchase options.

The consideration phase which is in the middle of the purchase funnel — turns out to be the central link between the Social Web and Marketing and hence evolved the term social media marketing. This is the Operations connection of social media based marketing, where conversations between consumers based on experiences carry further and with greater trust than traditional media.

For any important purchases now a days, it has almost become vital to learn about the product/brand and compare the same with other competing brands. While you do so, you interact with friends, google the products, search on twitter and read experiences of those who have used the product/brand earlier!

Recent studies have shown that of the estimated 3.5 billion word-of-mouth conversations that occur around the world each day, about 2.3 billion of them make a reference to a brand, product or a service.

- Dave Evans’ book on Social Media Marketing

If roughly two out of every three conversations online refers to a brand/product/service, lets not ignore the importance of social media in the consideration phase of purchase funnel. Most importantly, ‘Awareness’ can be controlled by marketer, ‘Purchase’ phase can also be controlled by a marketer by Point-of-sale advertising and by providing value/after-sales-service to encourage repeat purchase. However, ‘Consideration’ phase is often left on God to manage!

With social networks and following the conversations happening about your brand and competitors is a key to control the ‘consideration’ phase. The talks that affect the consideration phase are often in 0′s and 1′s. Opinions formed are either positive or negative, which depends majorly on living up to the promise made by the product/brand.

The user generated feedback would be positive if your operations + marketing link gets right in first step. All the best otherwise!

The basic application of social media is as a consideration phase tool that connects post-purchase experiences with potential customers progressing from awareness to purchase.

Spending more time on getting the ‘Operations + Marketing relationship’ right along with the social feedback cycle and the effective use of social media is a better idea.