As professional marketers we’re always looking for new and better ways to collect information about our customers so that we may better serve them.  We, for the most part, have good (read legal) intentions.  Much like Disney executives who spend time in character suits within the park, I believe that it’s good practice to put ourselves in the place of our customers and look at the world from their point of view.  Here are some outtakes from a security newsletter, OUCH , by ANS Institute Security Newsletter for Computer Users (Volume 6, Number 7, July 2009).  Take a read through and think about how simple the "simple" things you ask of your customers really are and how important a relationship really is. Read the rest of this entry >>

Made to Stick , a book by Chip and Dan Heath, brings about concept of tappers and listeners with respect to marketing.  They contend marketers have too much information to adequately convey their message to prospective customers — it’s like an inside joke meant for the world that only we get.  But what if the reverse was true?  What if they are the tappers?  Then we are the ones without all the information and we’re missing the message the world is trying to tell us.
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The best and brightest minds in your industry don’t work for you.  Well, some might, maybe one, but the vast majority do not.  This leaves you two options:  one, attempt to identify, locate, and hire them — a time-consuming and expensive proposition, assuming they are for hire — or two, work with them to incubate and develop ideas within your industry for free. Read the rest of this entry >>

The whole idea behind new media and social networking is to form deeper relationships with customers which can be cultivated into a strong bond and, hopefully, brand loyalty. We use twitter, facebook, email, linkedIn, blogs, direct mail, and several other medias to stay connected to them. We spend millions to form and cultivate the relationships but, in the process, do we forget about the relationship itself?
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