Friday, November 30, 2007
Internet marketers focus on the wrong things - again..!
Marketers always seem to be reinventing the wheel; no sooner do they come up with a "great new concept" than they ditch it in favour of some "good old fashioned" marketing. Perhaps it's just me - but I reckon marketing is pretty simple and straightforward stuff; it's marketers who appear to make it complex.
For instance, take the latest research from Anderson Analytics. This shows that marketers want to concentrate on things like customer satisfaction, customer retention, segmentation, brand loyalty and return on marketing investments. Don't they all sound grand? But when you buy something do you ever find yourself saying to your friends, "Oh, I only bought it because I am loyal to the brand and after all, I'm in the right segment which is why I am such a satisfied customer who is retained by the business."
Or do you say, "I bought this because I really liked it". People buy things because they like them or because they need them. Marketing is merely about making people aware of things they might like or they might need and then convincing them to buy them; simple. And when you ask people what influences them most to make that decision to buy, they always say "word of mouth".
So, why does this new research of 600 marketing "experts" show that "word of mouth" is one of the least important areas for marketing in 2008? Do these expert marketers know something we don't? Is the world going to change next year and we will all suddenly stop buying things because we no longer like word of mouth? No, once again it is marketers focusing on the wrong things, trying to make life much more complex than it need be.
The result is that anyone running an Internet business is infected by the "complex" which takes them away from the "straightforward". But take a look at the world's best marketing success stories - they all did it by being straightforward, having a focused concept and providing something people wanted or needed. Easy really.
Labels: internet marketing, shopping
Add this story to:
| BlinkList | BlogMarks | del.icio.us | Digg | Furl | Google | LinkRoll | Lycos |
| ma.gnolia | Netscape | Newsvine | Ning | reddit | Simpy | Spurl | Squidoo | Wink |
Email this story to your friends: 
Readers' Comments:
At
December 04, 2007 2:21 PM 
said…
At
December 04, 2007 2:34 PM 
Graham Jones said…
Thanks for your comment. I agree, people do say many of the things you suggest. But it's about what goes on in people's minds that I'm getting at. They either buy things because they need them or like them. So in your example they need a car and they like the Mercedes. Tony and the cuddly toy, in your example, help the experience of liking the Mercedes get firmed up in their mind surely.
True, every industry has people who turn complex into simple. I remember a doctor once telling me that I had "upper respiratory tract complications due to infective rhinitis" - which means I had a bad cold....!
And by the way, I'm glad you find you had to disagree with me. Gosh wouldn't the world be boring if we all agreed with each other all the time?
At
December 05, 2007 12:08 PM said…
Just read this on the website of a very successful ad agency. The quotation comes from one of their clients:
Give us a prediction for marketing in the next five years?
Key focus will be on 'how we can be invited into consumers mind' rather than 'how we can we break through'. Facilitation and empowerment. Hence more focus on deeper consumer insights and response.
Marketing to individuals/groups rather than to the masses.
E drive & technology as a more effective & efficient medium to make more direct communication with consumers on their terms - when they want to and how they want to.
Oh dear. The marketing industry is in trouble. Real trouble.
At
December 11, 2007 12:32 PM said…
All this talk about word of mouth and marketing reminds me of something else that amused me recently.
I'm a tutor on the Chartered Institute of Marketing diploma course, and in one of the modules I teach, the examiner's report for a recent exam session criticised candidates for talking about planning word of mouth marketing as though it were an activity they could plan and book through a media agency like they would with billboards or radio!
The people taking this exam and making this suggestion invariably work in marketing already - what a depressing thought.
Maybe I should latch on to this and recruit a load of people to go round saying nice things about products and hire them out to ill-informed marketing people!
If only these students had mentioned the web and the way that it can generate good word of mouth through blogs, forums, reviews, e-mail a friend links and so on. Maybe then they would be mentioned in the examiner's report for different reasons.
Graham,
I enjoy your newsletters but this is the first time I've found myself disagreeing with what you wrote.
"Oh, I only bought it because I am loyal to the brand and after all, I'm in the right segment which is why I am such a satisfied customer who is retained by the business."
Of course nobody says that, but I suspect people might say something like:
"I only ever shop at X. The service is excellent and they have exactly what I like."
or even:
"I've had 5 Mercedes now and I can't imagine owning any other car. Tony, the sales manager, always gives me a good deal and they even gave my grand daughter a cuddly toy when we went to pick up the 500SL."
Isn't 'word of mouth' an expression of brand loyalty?
I agree that marketing 'experts' tend to make things sound more complicated than they are but the industry is hardly unique in that. Every industry has people who thrive on stating the obvious in complex language.