The second day was very insightful. Charlene discussed why and how we should be listening to our consumers and developing our marketing on their terms opposed to trying to market "at them". Her take is that society has become "pull" marketing focused and "push" marketing is slowly dying. From my experience I think she is on the right track, more and more people are doing their own research online and generating their own hypotheses. The number one influencer in that research is peer groups not the OEM...
The next session was focused on Frog Design and Sprint/Nextel and how they are working together to create consumer goods of the future. It was a good presentation but more focused on things to come on the next ten years not what is happening today.
I then took a break and caught up on some work.
When I returned I sat in a session about segmentation and how companies are using segmentation to better market to their consumers. I was really enamored with Best Buy and their approach. Most companies segment their consumers and then focus on the high profit segment and let the other segments go away or they try to push the other segments into the highly profitable segment. Both seem pretty silly. BestBuy takes a different approach. All segments are alike, lets create business managers and have them focus on their particular segment. Set goals and objectives for that segment and let each segment flourish on their own. To me this is one aspect Charlene was talking about, find out what drives a particular segment and then market to that segment the way they want on their terms.
The final session I sat in was about Viral marketing, Jacob McKee from Lego was there and I think he really understands what needs to be done for his company. But his responses were more around enthusiast management not viral. He really knows how to foster an enthusiast and convert them into a brand advocate. I really think he and Jim Nail summed it up when they informed the crowd, "people are already talking about your products, find them and make them advocates."
My view.... Of course
Chris
Whisperado's "I'm Not the Road": rootsy, countrified album with a lot of
humor and a little pathos
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"I'm Not the Road" is the second album from NYC-based indie band
Whisperado. I've been listening to it pretty steadily since it came out a
couple weeks ago...
22 minutes ago
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1 comments:
Charlene is absolutely on target with the pull vs. push mentality. Many companies are still in the 1950s/1950s broadcast mode: if I mass market to a ton of people, and get X%, that's the key to success. Frankly, if you target market to a small, solid segment, you'll get better qualified leads, the deals will close faster, and you won't aggravate the folks who don't want to hear the message.
This is why blogs and newsletters are so important in Web presence: they help gather the interested people, who will then buy at a time appropriate to them, not when the company wants them to buy. This thought is scary to companies, but when I ask the executives at companies trying to push products down Web visitors' throats, "Well, do you like being pressured?, Do you like having to fill out a form to get a whitepaper so a salesrep can call you and ask you to buy?" people almost always say no. I then ask them why they think their customers are any different, and that sort of stymies them.
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