Archive for February, 2008

It looks like we’re getting past the tipping point. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, brought back the old idea that the opinions of a few highly influential people are responsible for kicking off a trend. The key take-away in marketing: focus on getting these key people on board with your message and they’ll take it from there. Today, companies are spending billions trying to convert A-list bloggers and other ‘influentials’ into fans.

In the recent Fast Company article Is the Tipping Point Toast, Clive Thompson uncovers research done by Yahoo!’s Duncan Watts that may debunk the concept of ‘influentials’. It turns out the very concept makes so much sense that nobody thought to test it. When Watts developed simulations to see if he could prove the ‘influential’ theory – he ended up doing the exact opposite. It turns out normal people have a lot more power kicking off trends than Gladwell’s theory gives them credit for. As Watts sums it up, “If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one–and if it isn’t, then almost no one can.”

If Watts is right, mass marketing might be making a comeback. If we all hold the power, you never know who will kick-start your next megatrend.

The promise of 1-to-1 marketing has brought us further away, instead of closer to our customers. In an attempt to “personalize” marketing interaction, we have turned away from understanding our customers and instead replaced the interaction with a templated “choose-your-own adventure” approach, making interactions more superficial instead of more meaningful.

Let me give you an example: Not too long ago, a software company showed me what they believed was the ultimate triumph in marketing. Their system tracked customer preferences enabling marketers to create custom-tailored communications. The case study they showed me was the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). By completing a profile on the site, the ASPCA would learn if you were a dog or cat owner. Once they captured this piece of information, the brilliance of their system would kick in – in their monthly email, the banner graphic would show a picture of a dog for a dog owner, and a cat for a cat owner.

Sure, cat owners are more likely to enjoy a kitten photo than someone who isn’t a cat person, but this approach to ‘personalized’ marketing completely misses the point of customized messages. “You like dogs so I’ll show you dogs” doesn’t really take a relationship to the next level. By approaching communication design as a template with a list of content to select from, no new insight or understanding is ever added to the relationship by the marketer. At its best, 1-to-1 marketing is reactive, and at it’s worst, it’s ‘Frankenstein Marketing’ with communications getting reduced to little more than a series of unrelated parts strung together.

There is a better way.

Good communication adds value to the relationship. This value comes from a deeper understanding of the person with whom you are interacting. This allows you, the marketer, to anticipate the needs of your customers. At 4SIGHT we help our clients develop this deeper understanding through persona development and segmentation.

A persona is a fictitious customer profile that represents a group of your customer base with similar needs, goals and emotional drivers. They are developed through a series of interviews and customer research with real customers. These personas go beyond market segmentation because they connect you with the emotions of your customers as individuals, instead of statistical and demographical group-wide differences.

With a well-defined and clearly understood set of personas, you can go beyond the superficial differences of your customers to address their emotional needs. For example, ASPCA could go beyond cats and dogs, and identify why different personas donate. I don’t think donors give money because the right animal is pictured in an email. Instead, they might learn that some donate because of their love for animals while others donate because they believe it is a well-run community organization. Suddenly their communication strategy can go beyond superficial changes and add value to the conversation.

The rise of technology-driven marketing allows for a new approach to relationship building But, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you always should. 1-to-1 marketing certainly has its place, but it’s not the end-all. Just as the choose your own adventure book can be entertaining it will never be the great American novel, and a templated approach to 1-to-1 marketing will never be a true two-way conversation.