Customer communities herald new ground rules for successful marketing
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Keywords: brand promotion, customer community, customer evangelist, customer relationship management (CRM)
Customer communities herald new ground rules for successful marketing Graeme Foux Received (in revised form): 1 June 2005
Abstract The internet was meant to enable marketers to reach their audience in an innovative and timely fashion, while being able to extract more information about their customers. The reality is that few have taken full advantage of this new medium. As far as interactive marketing, brand promotion and communication with customers are concerned the internet remains an underexploited medium. So why have corporations not taken advantage of the internet to reduce their distance from customers, creating a robust two-way dialogue, reaching more customers in less time, reacting quicker to customer feedback, better educating customers about the product offering, increasing customer satisfaction and improving customer insights? Well, e-marketing and CRM have failed to deliver on early promise and the internet has lost its early sparkle and invincibility. In truth there are more people online than ever before, sharing in virtual communities, looking for information and purchasing. So how can corporations use this to their advantage? Customer communities. These in turn foster and give a platform to customer evangelists. In a well-run and managed customer community, these benefits can be easily realised and both consumer and seller will see instant benefits, mainly in the form of customer evangelists. This paper suggests the steps that should be taken to start a customer community and make customer evangelists do your marketing.
Introduction
Graeme Foux Knexus Consulting Mayfair House 39 Great Portland Street London W1W 7JZ UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7631 4151 Fax: +44 (0)20 7631 4150 E-mail: [email protected]
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Would you like to increase your sales team by thousands of people, without any of the costs associated with recruiting a new salesforce? Or be able to reach people who do not use your product or service, with a personal endorsement of your product from someone who they trust? What effect would thousands of extra sales people have on your revenue, customer relationships and interactions? Not to mention the increase in your brand recognition, trust and publicity this would generate. All those extra sales people, each with their own personal contact list, pushing your product when they perceive that someone they know personally has a need for your products or services. If money were no object we would all try to employ thousands of new sales and marketing people to reach more customers and allow our brand
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Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice
Customer communities herald new ground rules for successful marketing
‘Customer evangelist’
recognition to benefit from this extended salesforce. Unfortunately, while more sales people would equate to more sales and marketing
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