subject: All day long we hear the calls of the sirens for a more innovative marketing [print this page] All day long we hear the calls of the sirens for a more innovative marketing
IT IS NECESSARY to be on twitter, facebook or other social networks to be closer with our consumers, create new sales channels or secure our revenue.
Does Innovation rhyme necessarily with efficiency?
Sometime a Back to Basic strategy could be imperative to win in profitability
How many companies today are on Facebook? The answer: many!
How many do generate real additional revenue? The answer: not so many!
Very original marketing campaigns were born on Facebook, I remember the BMW one on the promotion of the series 1 (To Graffitti Wall Experience) which allowed about 10.000 persons to create their own drawing and 600.000 to vote for determining the winner.
Even more original, the Burger King one on Facebook (Whopper sacrifice), where you received a coupon for a free burger (85.000 users) for 10 deleted friends.
Two successful examples of campaigns where the buzz worked well.
It permitted them to collect numerous qualified contacts, but how much energy spent by other companies for a result more than debatable?
Back to Basic.
Do you really need to create a facebook group to be closer with your consumers, to know them better, or to increase revenue on them?The Best-seller of C.K Prahalad (Prahalad is one of the most influential management thinker in the world - Times-London) and Mr KRISHNAN " The new ge of innovation " (editions Mc Graw Hill) offers a simple formula for better efficiency very different from what is named " innovation "
N=1 R=G This is the magic formula to generate value!
Even if the company possesses millions of customers (N), she must be capable of offering a personalized experience (1)
The access to the resources (R) to implement a platform answering these stakes is henceforth global (G). The company orchestrates the alignment of the various internal and external constituents (experts, solutions, network, products).
It is necessary to go away from product-oriented marketing and to propose an experience perceived as unique to the consumer's eyes. The marketing departments have to focus on the customers and personalize their experience. The value is in the customization, the well-known "one to one" or "one to few" marketing.
When the consumer has the choice of its product, companies don't have the choice and must be more efficient or smarter.It's not possible anymore to do as Ford did when it launched model T,when you could choose the color of the car since it was the black one :-)
The success of the iPhone was less the result of the design but more of the personalized experience (N=1) of a service proposed through a global platform (R=G).It is necessary to know the consumer to be able to offer him the services that he wishes (N=1).
Customer knowledge and personalized message rhyme with data analysis.
Proust said " The real discovery of the journey does not consist in finding new territories but to have a new glance " ........ in our case, analyzing properly the data we have in our organizations. It will allow us to serve better our consumers.
Before dashing into innovations which can be ephemeral (Second Life), let us look in our meadow, let us use what we have to act more efficiently, leverage our previous investments and let us get closer to the N=1 R=G marketing strategy.Don't try to find somewhere else what exists in your databases. It is not a big revolution, it is enough to get further, but the chances to generate value are much bigger with less business risk.
N=1 R=G
The implementation is not complicated; it needs a database, some analytics and obviously targeted actions. Don't use analytics without action; it will be a waste of time and money.
But very often the reality is more delicate.
How many web sites, blogs, forums, phone conversations or other emails are not used to improve our customer knowledge?
Gartner reminds us in its 2005 study " CRM Analytics-Realizing our Potential " that only 50 % of the available data were analyzed and worse, only 25 % were used to take an action.
In a competitive world, the agility and the flexibility require by this formula imposes a convergence and narrow links between the various departments of the company (IT, Sales, Call Center, Marketing.)
BACK TO BASIC : N=1 R=G
USE what we have, be more effective and after that listen to the sirens of innovation for additional performance or new business opportunities.
