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10 Alternative Marketing Trends for 2007, Part I
While marketers are constantly watching for
alternative methods that can give them a competitive
edge in over-crowded markets, Drew Neisser, CEO for
Renegade Marketing explains the ones that will rise
fastest in 2007.
Here are the first 5 of the Top 10 Trends:
1. Corporate honesty at all costs
Bloggers are bringing a new level of scrutiny to
corporations and their marketing activities.
Marketers must assume they live in glass houses and
that consumers are armed with some large stones.
Directness and honesty will not only help you win a
lot of respect but also to recover from some bad
shots. This is exactly what the folks at FaceBook
discovered when their recent "upgrade" caused an
uproar among their stalwarts who decried a loss of
privacy. Bombarded with negative emails and
postings, FaceBook management was quick to respond,
first with a "don't panic, we hear you" posting
followed later by a "you're right, we fixed it" note
to all of their loyal users.
2. Transparent customer satisfaction
In a world of glass houses, the winners will be
those companies that focus first and foremost on
customer satisfaction. Expect more companies to
redouble their efforts to improve customer
satisfaction in 2007 at every point of contact. Call
center response times will be heavily scrutinized
with the goal of reducing hold time to seconds
instead of minutes. More companies will offer the
"push zero" feature providing valuable customers
relief from endlessly annoying option trees. Online
customer support will also improve radically as more
companies offer live support, along with improved
web searches that allow customers to find what they
need in just a click or two.
3. Net Promoter Scores
As customer satisfaction moves to the forefront of
business strategies, expect more companies to use
new metrics such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to
assess progress and reward performance. Net Promoter
Score was developed by former Bain consultant Fred
Reichheld and measures the relative strength of
brand promoters versus brand detractors. His
research found that companies with high Net Promoter
Scores consistently outperformed those with lower
customer satisfaction ratings. The beauty of NPS is
that it only requires asking one question: "On a
scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend
brand X to a friend?" Companies such as GE have
already made NPS ratings an integral part of their
marketing plans, basing some 20% of compensation on
NPS scores.
4. Blog monitors
In 2007 marketers will enhance their ability to
defend against potentially ruinous blog attacks by
dedicating resources to blog monitoring and blog
response. The role of Blog Monitor will finally
become a full time position in the communications
department, as opposed to the occasional activity of
a lone blog enthusiast. In addition to tracking blog
noise, the Blog Monitor will actively engage other
bloggers, correcting untruths and responding to
issues as they arise. Corporate blogs will also be
an important defensive weapon, assuming the authors
are empowered to tell the truth (even if that means
admitting a product's shortcomings).
5. Niche market mining
Marketers will mine new niches with increasing
accuracy and reward. Unilever created Small & Mighty
detergent, packing a lot of cleaning punch into a
small container. Targeting urban city dwellers that
hate lugging heavy containers to the Laundromat,
Small & Mighty has found a sweet spot and is quite
literally cleaning up. Panasonic recently introduced
a 103-inch Plasma TV that retails for US$75,000
(including, of course, custom installation). Clearly
this is not a product for the masses but, in
addition to providing bragging rights for producing
the world's largest plasma screen, no
self-respecting billionaire will want to be left of
the waiting list for this kind of jaw-dropper.
6-10… Catch the next 5 Alternative Marketing Trends
for 2007 in the next issue of the Marketing Advisor
hitting your inbox around Nov 9th.
Founded in
1996, Renegade creates ideas and campaigns that cut
across all channels, bringing something of a
guerrilla mentality to each project.
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Melissa Data
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