George Dearing dot com |
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it is critical to know your "customer health." It is a window on long-term issues and their anticipated future financial impact. I'm not talking about standard analytics like ROI or cost of customer acquisition that are the basics for any marketing department. I'm talking about a scorecard on consumer behavior that predicts future purchasing potential and highlights growth opportunities and potential weaknesses.
While paying attention to the age demographics of their target, marketers are also watching other factors that might influence a purchase decision. With the economic downturn, Tancer says there was an increase in email advertising touting savings and other deals as well as Internet searches that have to do with finding coupons or savings. Both findings would suggest marketers be more strategic when it comes to their digital marketing campaigns, Tancer says, adding, "The days are gone where we could just guess how people are going to search and build a campaign around that.
General Mills is also taking a more serious look at boomers' children, millennials, which it defines as those aged 16 to 33 -- all 75 million of them. "This generation is very home and family oriented," Mr. Friendly said. "They're also completely at ease with technology." He added that many of them don't remember life without PCs, ATMs, or cellphones. The company is working hard to connect with this group virtually, with an iPhone app, blogging with Betty Crocker, or following Nature Valley on Twitter.
It is every marketer's task to seek out its product's emotional touch points and figure out ways to strengthen, enhance and deliver those assets with authority. This is when design strengthens the brand and reveals smart, deliberate purpose.
As a marketing person, instead of looking at a gaping mouth of unknowns, consider that you have a referenceable customer in front of you. Rather than asking yourself what tools you need to deploy to reach thousands of prospects, figure out who that referenceable customer is – and why they’re willing to serve as a reference.
"The digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival, complete with hawkers, barkers and a bearded lady. By the time someone actually gets to your site, they've been conned, popped up, popped under and upsold so many times they really have no choice but to be skeptical."
Far more common is a need to acquire customers through a series of steps like SEO, SEM, PR, Social Marketing, direct sales, channel sales, etc. that will cost the company significant amounts of money. What shocks and surprises many first time entrepreneurs is just how high the numbers are for CAC using these kinds of techniques.
Read the whole post..you might want to plaster this one to your whiteboard.
Founder of the Dearing Group LLC., a consultancy focused on communications and sustainability.
George can be reached via email at george@dearinggroup.com or on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Subscribe to this site via RSS here.
Note: All content on this site is the personal opinion of George Dearing and doesn't represent the views of my past, current or future employers or their clients.
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