This is how I decipher marketing!
1. Being innovative in marketing starts with listening to consumers (Not exactly)!
Don’t get me wrong, but in today’s world it’s imperative to observe a customer through all the means possible and not just do a feedback research that’s going to give predicted results.
Because it’s not always the consumer who knows the most about his own needs, or for that matter a product that he consumes!
To put things in context, imagine, how successfully Intel has executed it’s marketing program. It has always positioned it’s products at the top end of performance, and coupled with that, consistently launched new products with higher benchmarks.
Frankly, there is no specific need for me to buy a laptop with dual-core processor and hyperthreading (I perhaps don’t even know what difference can it bring to my life), but still I will think twice before buying an AMD equipped laptop or a cheaper celeron.
That’s because Intel has not necessarily just listened to customers, it has observed the buying behavior (which is simplistically, based on a feeling of consumer insecurity, that arises from less knowledge about technology and a tendency to buy products that comply with latest standards, so that they do not face any support problems later), and based on that configured it’s entire marketing strategy.
Intel is a leader, and as a leader it sets benchmarks…and changes them very frequently…it doesn’t wait for the customers or the competition to action or initiate any change/deviation.
Hence, OBSERVING a customer (see, who are the peripheral users, what are the peripheral needs of existing users, what are the peripheral products, buying behavior and see what best practices can we superimpose in our marketing) is more important than just listening to him.
Another example that comes to my mind is of one of the most impactful registration drive campaigns from Timejobs.com.
Timesjobs.com, observed two pain points,
1. Weak bandwidth/communication links: So when a person would start to register on Naukri or mosnter, many times, the connection breaks and the person has to re-fill the entire form.
2. The forms were so lengthy that, people would fill up half of it and then abandon it, to come back again and fill up at leisure.
(There was no specific complain from the customer, because for the customer Naukri and Monster were two great things that have happened to him, and if it means a little bit more effort to fill-in the form, not a problem)
Timejobs created ads that looked like registration forms and it did 2 things for Timesjobs:
1. The person can fill the form from anywhere (clicking a link from within google, or filling up a form within rediff.com)
2. It was quick and easy. (just 3 steps). A person needed to fill in just about 3 fields to get registered.
This helped in driving traffic, so much so that today, Timesjobs claims to be the fastest growing job portal in India.
Again, Timesjobs may not be a better product, but all it did was observe a latent need/consumer behavior and that made a difference.
2. Segmentise Consumers and make segment specific Product/marketing strategies
I have pondered and discussed this earlier in this blog.
For e.g.: Imagine if a company like HP ties up with a newspaper like Times of India (and their special School initiative), and say 100 Schools across India, and encourage children to come out with a fortnightly school newspaper.
The newspaper can be designed on HP-PCs using a few HP softwares, scanners and printers (they may collaborate with adobe for advanced users), and can be distributed by Times of India.
Imagine the number of young minds you can influence. These youngsters are not just the influencers today, but will be the actual buyers and users tomorrow.
Similarly this can be done for doctors, architects and other segments. All we need to do is to create a difference in terms of reaching closer to our prospects and creating an impact.
It’s a great opportunity, especially for players in the field of online gaming, blogging and social networking to tap into specific segments and leverage.
To be concluded... Please look forward to the concluding part of this article, this weekend. We shall discuss Blog Marketing and other innovative and simple ways to market your product)
(This article was first published on http://www.desicreative.com)
