Ecosystem
management:
why marketers
must learn to think
like ecologists
Ben Shaw
Marketers could learn a thing or two from ecologists on the
maintenance of ecosystems.
among younger teens.” Immediately after this, £11.2bn was
wiped off the company’s share price.
We live in a world of always-on brand communications across
multiple platforms and communities that require the same
care and attention as the most delicate wildflower. Over the
course of time, new parts of a brand’s ecosystem must be
created, grown and nurtured, but with careful thought given
to the impact these new presences will have on the rest of the
system.
Everyone remembers the infamous collapse of previous alldominating social networks, so, although Facebook is now
so big and ingrained it is unlikely to ever become as dried up
as MySpace or FriendsReunited, marketers must not take this
news lightly. This should be the warning bell for brands to start
tracking the shifts in their consumers’ online behaviours and
deciding how to change their brand ecosystems accordingly.
Like any good ecologist, marketers know that over-investment
and focus on just one organism or resource can leave
the rest of the ecosystem malnourished. However, when
looking to develop beyond their status quo, new platforms
and opportunities are often discarded as a distraction or a
gamble compared with the reliability of their main resource.
Brands should be looking to diversify and experiment across
new platforms as their online audiences evolve. Snapchat
didn’t exist 18 months ago; now, more photos are shared
there every day than Facebook and Instagram combined. This
should be the time when brands’ ecosystems are reappraised
every month, not every year. As audiences develop new
behaviours, for example teens with mobile messaging apps,
brands must figure out how to connect with and add value to
audiences on those platforms.
However, it may be a bigger gamble for marketers to not
care for or develop the rest of their ecosystem. What happens
when that once fruitful resource dries up?
Organisations are continually encouraged by Facebook to
first invest to build an audience and then spend again to
actually reach them (thanks to Facebook’s “clever” EdgeRank
algorithm). They get an immediate positive return, their
fan numbers shoot up and the reach of each post is in the
millions.
But then, as they grow, they have to spend more to reach the
same audience. And then Facebook tweaks the algorithm
and it becomes harder to reach the original audience, so they
spend a bit more. Then the original audience gets bored with
all the branded content on Facebook and starts spending
more time on other platforms. By this time, the brand has
invested so much time and money in this one platform, it
would be a waste to stop now. Wouldn’t it?
Facebook’s chief financial officer, David Ebersman, recently
admitted: “We did see a decrease in daily users, partly
This requires brands to build and develop their ecosystem,
which takes planning and continued management, not just to
ensure the brand is covered at a basic social-hygiene level,
but to ensure it is gaining value from all of its activities.
This need is why social-media teams have developed from
a sole community manager overseeing a page to a team of
analysts, strategists, creatives, and now editors, ensuring a
consistent brand presence, experience and narrative across
the ecosystem.
Ecologist
Norman
Christensen
defined
eco
system
management as “management driven by explicit goals,
executed by policies, protocols and practices, and made
adaptable by monitoring and research based on our best
understanding of the ecological interactions and processes
necessary to sustain ecosystem structure and function”.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Ecosystem-management tips
1. Track your audience. Pay close attention to where your audience is moving online and decide where to follow it.
2. Experiment before investing. The best brands act like users on social platforms, so follow their lead by cheaply creating
content to see what your audience likes on different platforms.
3. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. As with any B2B service, it can be dangerous to rely solely on one platform –
build your ecosystem across multiple platforms.
4. Look to build retained data. Ensure you’re building for the future and collating valuable consumer data to add value
to future opportunities.