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How to Use the Predictive Value of Buzz

Guy Kawasaki Co-Founder, Alltop Recent Posts

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May 12, 2009

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Business Forecasting 2012

Our special feature on forecasting sheds light on how to choose the right model, offers advice from Jack Stack and more.

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Online buzz (or lack of it) can predict future sales and help you change your marketing before it’s too late according to a blog post called “People Are Talking.” Three researchers, Lakshman Krishnamurthi (professor of marketing at the Kellogg School), Shyam Gopinath (doctoral student at the Kellogg School), and Jacquelyn Thomas (associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism), examined the data from an online forum with more than eight million posts. Then they applied aggregate-level metrics to the actual sales performance of five cell phone models. They found that online postings can help a company understand its brand perceptions:

“There is very practical value to tracking these online posts. You don’t have sales data for three months from now, but you have the online postings right now. This makes it possible for companies to fine-tune their marketing and not wait for the sales to go down.” — Lakshman Krishnamurthi

Usually, companies conduct marketing and then wait for sales results to determine if the marketing is effective. This can take months because of multi-tiered distribution: selling goods to wholesalers who sell them to retailers who sell them to actual users. But these days, who can wait months to affect sales? By contrast, online postings are immediate—all you have to do is be diligent enough to monitor them, smart enough to figure out how to change, and then courageous enough to make the change.

There are many ways to monitor them. Here’s one example: www.filtrbox.com ;; courageous enough” tasks.