By Paul Ashby
Are we at all surprised that
We live in a schizophrenic world and we will be held accountable for our sins. The reasons why the writing on the wall was ignored has to do with the denying of inconvenient truths and also because nobody
O.K. So where do we go from here?
One-way, top-down communication does not work as well as in former days. Today, companies must create conversations with customers and deliver useful content at the moment their prospects, clients or constituents need it. Many firms will need to reinvent their marketing in 2010.
Marketers can’t push products on people. They have to think like journalists and create a dialogue with their audience to earn a prospect’s trust. Free or low-cost applications such as blogs and podcasts, in addition to social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have changed the old rules.
In addition, free social networking applications can be used for managing your company’s reputation, conducting market research, monitoring your competitors’ efforts and collaborating with your colleagues.
Twitter can also serve as a platform for your company’s customer service.
Ideal clients can now be reached with targeted messages that cost a fraction of the old expensive advertising campaigns. In addition, social media marketing and PR efforts often allow instant feedback and measurable results, so businesses can immediately see which marketing strategies are working for them and which ones are not.
Online marketing these days is not about flashy websites. More than ever, companies need to provide useful information to help customers make their purchasing decisions. Websites cannot be stale – content needs to be fresh and reactions of the visitors should be measured and analysed, so that the content can be continuously improved.
Since when was running with the herd good for a company's performance? It's all about being unique.
We're number two - we try harder. So went the old slogan from car hire firm Avis. Memorable marketing, but is it any way to run a business? Avis has been trying harder for as long as I can remember (and that's a long time now), but it's still only number two.
The problem with companies like Avis - across a diverse range of markets - is that they just aren't different enough. The days when it was possible to thrive simply by doing the same thing as the competition, only a little bit better, are long gone. Distinctiveness is now the name of the game.
So, if you want to escape a lifetime of trying
