I thought it would be a great idea to start a Blog to find out what the “Blogosphere” was all about, nothing like diving in the deep end to find out how it all works.
Once in and up to my neck in reading, writing, links and feeds I started to notice a feeling that traditional marketers were disliked by customers – perhaps not as much as estate agents – but nevertheless a cool atmosphere. Perhaps I’m picking up on a few over amplified views in the blogging community, but it got me thinking – did I mind it or even deserve it.
Given the tools of the trade a traditional corporate marketer does his best to take a product or service (which hopefully they managed to get some input into at the research and development stage) and then they do what’s possible on a discretionary budget to get the messages to the target audience, hopefully generating some business and above all measuring the activity to justify the ROI and their job.
It seems to me that Blogging and the new interactive communication technologies provide marketers the chance to take the driving seat in businesses, but not by finding more ways to advertise efficiently or even smarter promotions, but by seizing the opportunity to handle the inbound communication channel that is indisputably from the customer. This customer mandate can then drive product or service innovation that really fulfils the market requirement and lessens the need to hard sell and promote the business.
This is nothing more than marketing basics but far too many marketers are wrapped up in budgets, ROI justifications, product launches etc. to even remember that their real role is to totally understand the market. How often in discretionary budget cut does research get the bullet first?
1 comment:
The death of the marketeer .... following on from the death of the salesman? Perhaps not. But certainly automated outbound call centers, increasingly ineffective direct marketing tactics, and all the "push" oriented marketing plays will continue to decline in effectiveness.
The focus is moving to quality of offering (as it should), and permission based marketing. Have something of value to say, have an outstanding product, and the new paradigm represented by what we know as the blogisphere allows you to reach, engage and understand your customer in ways we haven't been able to since our forebears left their small villages and moved to the cities two hundred years ago. Human and powerful.
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