brand

Sarah Worsham / Feb 24, 2009

Is Your Marketing Evil?

Seth Godin’s post yesterday, Is marketing evil? refreshed a subject that’s come up in my mind from time to time. Seth’s post was about avoiding marketing things that are harmful to people. He also briefly touched upon evil marketing techniques, which I think are important for all business people to consider.

Sometimes the product or service we’re selling doesn’t have any particularly harmful effects, but the way that we’re selling it isn’t as open or truthful as it should be. Tricking customers into buying your product for a quick buck may win in the short run, but it certainly won’t help your brand or reputation. Eventually you’ll run out of rocks to hide behind.

There are also products which are fine when used responsibly by the right people – alcohol is one example that comes to mind. However, some products in this category that may not be as obvious. For example, many online games can become addicting to people so much so that they avoid most interaction with the real world (disclaimer – I play computer games – both online and off. I am keenly aware of addictive qualities of some games). How do you market and sell a product that could be harmfully addicting to some people, especially when that addiction can feed your bottom line through monthly fees? Should you let people know about the possibilities ahead of time? Should you provide help for people who become addicted?

I think the important point is for marketers, business people, salespeople, and anyone else involved in selling a product or service to really consider the impact of both the product and the marketing. Using the golden rule to do onto others as you want done to yourself is a good measuring stick. Or follow Google’s lead and “do no evil”.

(photo by TonivS @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: brand, brand reputation, branding, marketing, marketing strategy, strategy, reputation

Sarah Worsham / Jan 13, 2009

Using RSS to Monitor your Name and Brand

There is a lot of information being published on the web every minute. Some of it may be about you, your company or your products. It is important to keep track of what’s being said about your business so that you can both respond effectively and learn from what your customers are saying.

Hopefully you know what RSS is. You may not be aware that you’re using it – if you subscribe to a website or blog and then read their posts in iGoogle, Google Reader or Bloglines, etc., you are using RSS. RSS can be a very easy way to monitor what is being said about your company. By using various search services that provide RSS feeds for their results, you can monitor what is said about your company, products, etc. right from your RSS reader.

Here’s a few places to start :

Google Blogsearch: Type in your company name. On the bottom of the left column click on the RSS link to subscribe to this feed. Now you’ll be able to monitor whenever a blog mentions your company name. Add separate searches for brand and product names. Having one for your name isn’t a bad idea either.
Twitter Search: Enter your company name. On the upper right click on “Feed for this query”. Repeat for product names, etc.
Technorati: Again search for your company name, etc. In the upper right of the search results there is a small Subscribe link with a RSS icon.

There are many different places to monitor what is said on the Internet. If you have other favorites, please share them in the comments below.

(photo by Docklandsboy @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: twitter, brand, brand monitoring, internet marketing, brand reputation, business, internet business strategy

Sarah Worsham / Dec 9, 2008

Online Customer Engagement Findings

As a followup to yesterday’s post on online customer engagement, reader Sarah Woodbridge suggested taking a look at cScape’s report on Customer Engagement. The report is well worth a look (and it’s free!). They’ve been producing a report for 3 years so they have a bit of historical data as well.

Customer engagement is widely seen as a way of deepening and enriching a product or service offering and a method for gaining customer insight. – The cScape Online Customer Engagement Survey Report 2009

Here are some of the key findings:

Only 42% of organizations surveyed have a defined customer engagement strategy in place
41% of respondents said that deteriorating economic climate has resulted in a greater focus on customer engagement
There’s interest in creating relationships with customers to increase the long-term customer value and also to increase the value delivered to the customer.
Most organizations feel that sensitivity to price is a key customer behavior that will have to be addressed in the next 12 months (48%).
Email newsletters are the most likely tactic to improve customer engagement (59%).
Web 2.0 and social media such as user ratings & feedback (41%), user-generated content (37%), blogging (36%) and social networks (36%) will also be used to engage customers.
Very few companies (5%) have a strategy that uses mobile channels.
Lack of resources continues to be a barrier to successful customer engagement.
About a third of companies site problems with technology as a significant barrier to cultivating better customer engagement.

Technorati Tags: online customer engagement, customer-centric,brand, branding, internet marketing, brand management, brand strategy, internet business strategy

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