Technology can change your approach to marketing
Posted by Grant Brewer on 01 Nov 2005
A familiar approach to building brand equity is to think of it in terms of above the line advertising. This is the traditional, glamorous approach that we see on television, on billboards and in print magazines. However this is not the only way to create a powerful brand. Some organisations have no choice but to find alternative ways to build their brand, since building a brand through above the line advertising is an expensive business. An alternative way to building loyalty and awareness amongst your customers is to use a more viral approach – sometimes often thought of as guerrilla marketing.
Seth Godin has written several books about aspects of viral marketing that can provide greater depth than covered here, but he always reminds us of the most important starting point to any successful marketing initiative – and that is to ask the customer for permission to communicate with them. Having permission increases the likelihood that the message will be heard, internalised and might influence behaviour. Today, technology provides an excellent way of building word of mouth and other viral marketing that build on permission based marketing.
Using weblogs to spread your message
Weblogs have become a publishing phenomena over the last few years. The opportunity for anyone to publish their thoughts on the internet has added a new dimension to the traditional role of newspaper, magazines and book publishers. The first weblogs were more like online diaries or journals, although they fast transformed into forums for real independent commentary. Today, some of the best authors publishing weblogs cover topics beyond technology and provide an alternative view of the world to the traditional media.
A smart organisation can enhance their customer communication by setting up their own weblogs, preferably doing so without controlling the whole process. Empowering employees to talk more freely about the organisation and its products with customers is a powerful way to develop brand advocates that proudly discuss your organisations products or services. They might talk about the good and the bad of your organisation on their weblogs, but they are creating word of mouth and awareness. Even when weblogs include negative commentary on your organisation, it contributes to your organisation's credibility when the management learn from the comments and participate in the debate rather than denying that any issues exist.
An even smarter organisation looks beyond its own weblogs and embraces those setup by independent people. When Telkom challenged the legitimacy of hellkom.co.za, they lost credibility in the marketplace by acting as though they were not interested in hearing consumers' views on service quality or products. Often organisations are blinded by the desire to protect their intellectual property and miss the opportunity to contribute to the debate around their brands. Contributing to the debate can enhance consumer awareness, trust and loyalty. A better solution would have been to collaborate. Collaborating with critics and commentators requires maturity of leadership in an organisation.
Good communication with customers using less formal or controlled channels can increase the perceived trustworthiness of the message. Engaging in good debate around services and products can increase consumer understanding of product or service features and how to use them. This is likely to contribute to better consumer experiences, reinforcing the positive word of mouth. The network effect in a connected economy also greatly amplifies the message, regardless of whether e-mail, sms or the web is medium of the message. However, you can't hide bad products or services behind a barrage of communication. The communication won't positively contribute to your marketing message if poor product or service quality is destroying customer goodwill and experience. Management's first focus must be designing and delivering great products, services and experiences.
Learning from the open source movement
Learning from the open source movement is another way to think differently about your organisation. The key change in perspective is to learn to let go of a degree of control around some of your intellectual property. Clearly, this is a risk and reward game, with the greater reward going to those that take some amount of risk in allowing their intellectual property out of their control. This could relate to sharing information about products, or involving customers in product testing or development – or even involving customers in strategy decisions.
eBay has become a household name around the world for being the largest online marketplace and for the strength of its community of users. Some users have quit regular jobs in order to make a living from buying and selling things on eBay. This community of users is so important to eBay that they are sometimes consulted on large strategy issues. And if they are not consulted, users have been known to lobby eBay management to make changes or face resistance to new features or directions.
Both Google and Amazon are examples of companies that have exposed the application programming interfaces of their systems to the public enabling other programmers to create applications that use Google or Amazon as a back office. This increases the risk that either organisation's reputation will be tarnished by the actions of some unknown programmer – but alongside this risk is the reward of much deeper penetration into the marketplace.
Technology enables new ways to communicate with customers
Ideas taken from technology can yield surprising results when they enable you to think differently about your organisation, its customers and its brands. Involving customers more directly in the day to day business can change the interaction between organisation and customer to a rich exchange of experience, knowledge and understanding. The exchange could lead you to identify product or service champions (inside your organisation or amongst customers) that you can support and that will lead to increased word of mouth in the marketplace, creating a real buzz around your organisation's product or services. These benefits are hard to realise through above the line advertising alone, and depend on intelligent use of technology.
Technology can change your approach to marketing was published as Strategym #32 in November 2005.
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