Why competitors may not be the best benchmark..

We are all used to ensuring that our strategy is secured around monitoring our competitors and developing our business in a way that will compete with others. However, it may well be that long term success is not delivered by having this type of focus. Here are a few reasons why competitors may not be the best benchmark to follow.

Too short sited

It is clear that putting the customer, as opposed to the product, at the centre of developing business is essential to any effective marketing campaign. But when we consider what will excite the customer and the type of value they attribute to our brands many of us may well be suffering from marketing myopia. To illustrate this point I would like to point to the success of Cirque du Soleil, they have effectively managed to make a dying industry (the circus) into a worldwide phenomenon. They did this by fusing 2 industries together, the theatre and the best of the circus. By removing elements that had lost their value (such as animal acts) the brand focused on an entirely new concept that was new and innovative, but most of all contained value for the customer by meeting an unmet desire of interpretive theatre merged with the best of circus quality. See the excellent writing by Ocean Blue Strategy for more on this topic.

Lack of emotional connection

Over time a brand loses focus with its customer. It gets so enticed into the measurement of its opponents that eventually the true desires of the future consumer are lost. The monitoring of cultural & social dynamics in the world are also often overlooked and many businesses focus on either cost savings or on answering immediate customer requests with a solution based model that initially appears customer centric. But what does this actually mean in challenging a change in consumer feeling in order to create new markets? This is where innovation needs to meet consumer value in order to create a real experience for the customer, this is more likely to endure in the long term and most importantly surpass competitors. An example of this is in Facebook where the inherent need to be social, coupled with an ever expanding global migration of people, made way for an entirely new format of innovation online.


Creating more risk in the long term

While initially the opportunity to measure, based on the same premise as competitors seems to be attractive, in the long run it can actually present the most risk. Consider how few businesses last that don't alter their value led creativity. And look at the leaders who are they following? This shows that out of the box thinking, merged with developing unmet needs by means of value to the customer, is by far the best strategy to take, even if there is currently no benchmark or historical data to prove this is the case.

So what do you think of your competitors now? The question is do you want to follow or to lead?

Behavioural targeting or permission marketing for lifetime value?

Both behavioural targeting(BT) and permission marketing (PM) can prove very profitable in driving business forward, but which is best for delivering long term business value?.

Behavioural targeting can help brands cut through the clutter and become more personalized in the acquisition process, it can also help customers via isolating more salient options and thus alleviating the trouble of ‘cognitive load’ in a cluttered marketplace. However, whilst this may be rewarding for a ‘quick win’ solution it does not necessarily remain helpful in building ‘relationships’ nor accommodating in attracting ‘loyalty’.

Permission marketing helps us to understand the customer further and doesn’t assume what the customer wants nor does it play on overt manipulation of a customer’s fleeting thoughts/journey. In this sense permission marketing is the unassuming friend of the customer by actually ‘asking’ the customer first and suggesting later. The process is longer in PM, and is akin to a ‘relationship’ as opposed to a ‘fling’, essentially it is less desperate.

With PM the opportunity for building a clean and relevant list, whilst long, is worth it in the long haul. Not only do you start to learn about your customers but you also can begin to understand their limits. In a world of ever increasing transparency and intrusion, there may well be a point where customers start to say no and then we need to know why.

The other benefits of permission marketing (especially when integrated into the automated workflow of e-CRM) is that you can create a contract from the beginning. Customers are then more open in offering the best ways for developing the relationship further, especially in regards to frequency of contact and timeliness, two of the most important matters in maintaining trust and acceptance.

Behavioural targeting is however, by no means unimportant or worthless. For a large number of brands, especially at certain touch points it can be highly influential and powerful, particularly in driving new business at speed. But perhaps the more deep layered segmented approach which is now applied via social media integration can make it more relevant and meaningful to the prospect.

The question we have left to answer is if we are seeking customers trust in order to build a long term ‘relationship’, then don’t we need to understand them first?. In this sense, therefore, is it not essential to know their limits and therefore actually ask them what they want? We all know where ‘assumption’ leads us in the end.

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By Ann-Marie Ivanova

Social Media, Privacy and Demographic Trends

"Social Media is here to stay, but who dares to question it?".

The question of whether social media is a fad may no longer need to be considered in so much depth. The truth is our younger generation now have the digital world so embedded in their life and culture that it is the very way they communicate. It is not just the young either, a rising population is growing in the over 30's and even greater in the over 50's. But the real question shouldn't be "Is social media here to stay?" but rather "Who allows us to use their information to penetrate a true one to one communication and do they invite it?"

My query here is in reference to the importance placed on privacy. For example, in behavioral targeting certain brands may yield fantastic results with a tailored message bespoke to a customer with suggestions based on their particular journey. But in certain product categories this may well be disastrous and seen as an invasion of privacy; for example, a surfer interested in sexual health is unlikely to want to be reminded where he or she has shopped with a personal message in their inbox or a pop up in their email. Furthermore, aside from product categories, perhaps there is a greater resistance generally in certain genders, age categories or socioeconomic groups. To take privacy one step further we can view the effect of the general mood in society in regards to on-line activity already.

One of the greatest trends of 2011 on Twitter was #Egypt showing the political following of this channel.However, we cannot ignore the massive popularity and influence of celebrities that has also created a major contribution and 'buzz' to social media as for example in the case of Beyonce and her baby news. This may well teach us something of the types of motivation and age groups we may have online but it is also a reminder that the web caters for everyone.

One third of all people open a Facebook account only to not use it again, this suggests some resistance. But the real concerns are more around the lack of trust in politics, the media and anti corporate sentiment in general. For example, the amalgamation of WikiLeaks, the hacking of Amazon and Hotmail along with the intrusion of Murdoch and the newspapers, has created an anti-corporate sentiment and a lack of trust in data sharing. Furthermore, with the power of the voice that has arisen out of the negative version of crowd sourcing seen recently in the 2011 riots, social media is now used to control society and to rebel. This shows how society is starting to be trusting only themselves and listening to their peers over any company, government or corporation, thus revealing how far we are away from anyone fully accepting full control of us or our data.

The truth is it is already happening, our lives are documented on Facebook in a timeline, our shopping is becoming more tracked and our behavior is more visible with a blending of our private and public lives. But the facts remain, social media is a trend, it's addictive for many and it is now our local "meeting house", it's convenient, interactive and fast which is also what are lives require, but perhaps we are missing a fundamental piece of research into how much we can take? Looking into demographic trends into privacy is a key topic that needs to be researched and developed if we are to truly understand the power and longevity of social media platforms for the future and especially for specific groups.

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