Blog: Marketing
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Let the Internet Do the Work
3/29/10Continue ReadingMIT did. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently won a contest presented by The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The contest was developed to test the powers of social networking. The challenge was to find the coordinates of 10 balloons randomly placed throughout the United States. Sounds massive? Well it only took a team from MIT less than 9 hours to successfully complete this daunting task. How did they do it? They used the power of the internet. They posted a link on their site informing people to sign up and help find these wonderful balloons. To encourage participants they offered an incentive. Money! Since the prize from DARPA was a nice $40K for the winner, the MIT team was able to effectively tease internet users to work for them. In the end MIT offered up the entire $40K to the participants; but if this were a business they could have walked away with a substantial ROI.
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Recognizing and Acting on Customer Differences
3/9/09Continue ReadingEach one of us is unique in his or her individual way. These differences between one person and another add the "spice" to life. Why is it, then, that most organizations don't recognize these differences and use this information to create customer strategies, experiences, and marketing activities that resonate?
Case in point: a co-worker and I are virtually identical - demographically. We are both female, the same age, married, without children. We both own a convertible sports car and our own home. Our income, credit-worthiness, and interests are very similar. Each of us travels extensively. We subscribe to some of the same magazines. We even live in the same town. To most organizations, we would be considered "the same" and marketed to identically. However - we are very different from one other in how we prefer to interact with organizations and buy their products.
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Out with the Old; In with the New.
12/2/08Continue ReadingLisa Bradner, senior analyst at Forrester Research kicked off day two of Forrester's Consumer Forum with a thought-provoking session on the future of consumer marketing. Entitled Consumer 2018 - Separating Fact from Fad, Lisa's presentation discussed what B2C companies need to know about consumers to drive their business in the next ten years.
So what *do* you as marketers need to know? Well, duh, the 4Ps, right? Not quite so fast. Brader suggests that we need to think beyond the traditional marketing mix with which we're all familiar - product, pricing, promotion and placement. Instead, marketers need to consider and integrate into their planning a whole new set of consumer-driven Ps - permission, proximity, perception and participation.
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Forrester's Next Big Idea
12/1/08Continue ReadingThe Forrester forums are generally content-rich events featuring top-notch keynotes by Forrester analysts and highly influential business leaders. The Consumer Forum, held October 28-29 in Dallas, TX, did not disappoint. In fact, almost all presenters provided valuable insight, best practices and/or big ideas that should shape how marketers think about and communicate with their customers.
The Day One highlight was most certainly James McQuivey, (Twitter: @jamesmcquivey) whose presentation, Satisfy Consumers for the Next Decade and Beyond, introduced the next Forrester Big Idea: People share a set of universal needs - connection, uniqueness, comfort and variety; satisfy those needs with convenience and you will win.
