Generational Marketing
Having run a multi-state franchise company with multiple brands it became obvious to me early on that if one were to properly respond to the needs and desires of your customer base; you must indeed, understand generational marketing. The X'ers have a completely different mindset than the "Boomers" or the "Matures." As I thought about this I also realized that it did not matter if you business was big or small; if you were the franchisee or the franchisor. All businesses must understand who their customers are and how the think and how this relates to their buying behavior. I am going to recommend a book to you, which you should go out and read immediately: "Rocking The Ages-The Yanelovich Report on Generational Marketing" By J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman. This is a great book and it should be read by everyone who owns a business; big or small. It starts out and ends with an interesting thing that happened at Playtex. You'll have to read the book to understand. It discusses the Xers, Boomers and Matures (those citizens who grew up right after the depression. Their buying habits and thought processes that go through their heads when making a buying decision. If you will read this book now and then think about it as you watch the Olympic games and how they market TV ads, you will see the trends and the target market. You may say to yourself that was a great commercial or that commercial is stupid. Well the one that will be considered stupid to you will be absolutely brilliant to a person of another time period. Look at the Dell commercial, "You're getting a Dell, Dude!" this commercial as funny as it is relates to all age groups and if you read Advertising Age Magazine this quarter you will see articles which rank that ad amongst the Taco Bell Dog, Where's the Beef, Have it Your Way, Joe Izusu, Lindsey Wagner Ford Commercials, E-Trade, and Fed Ex's newest ads. They are playing to a whole new marketing segment. They are blending the commercials to meet all age groups. Do yourself and you business a big favor, read this book and then think on it. "Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Time for Marketers to Clean Up Their Act!
The company envisaged smaller Internet service providers (ISP's) as their main target market for the software. The company president contracted with a sales/marketing person to handle the ISP market. He personally trained the candidate for two weeks, emphasizing all the while that the ISP market is one that needs to be gently handled.
The Lone Wolf is Blind
When Advertising, it's not always better to be the lone wolf.
B2B Marketing Tips - Create an Interactive Online Experience for Clients
Business to business communications on the web are as stale as a piece of week old toast.
3 High-Impact Fixes For Your Marketing Woes
How many times has your competitor gotten one over on you? The feeling of being left behind just eats away, until you do something about. The problem is that we often feel that we've got to come up with some grand plan in order to get our business skyrocketing again. Don't be fooled! Getting back on top of the market isn't as tough as it seems with these high-impact, easy-to-use fixes.
12 Lessons I Picked Up from Attending Seminars
So you just dropped a tidy sum to attend a seminar or some other three-day event. Now it's over and you're exhausted. Your client work is backed up. You have a fistful of business cards to connect with. And your family would like some face time. Time to get back into the swing of life, right? Wrong.
Online Magazine Subscription Services Make Shopping Online Fun For Magazines
If recreating the old experience of subscribing to magazines by filling out a subscription card is essential to the success as an Internet retailer, then MagMall.com takes top awards. The retailer has created a web site with all the ease of use of the original pop out cards through fast loading graphics, and an intuitively designed layout that is both easy to follow and navigate.
Joint Venture Marketing: What and Why
What is a Joint Venture? A joint venture is an agreement
in which two or more businesses work on a project for a
set period of time. Usually with a specific project or
goal in mind. Joint ventures can be long-term, like
promoting a product together, or some can be short-term,
like bartering or trading products and services. Ideas on
how to joint venture ideas are boundless.
How Do I Define My Market?
Your market is who you want to reach. Your customer. Who is your average customer? What is your estimate of total market size? What territory do you intend to serve? Will you offer a variety of products or services?
Target Your Share of the 50-Plus Market
Every 7 seconds someone in America turns 50. Are you doing your personal as well as professional best to make them your loyal customers, build trust, and receive referrals from satisfied customers? Here are some ways to increase your success and sales with this very diverse group.
Who is Your Perfect Client
When I started my coaching practice I believed that I could coach anyone. My marketing wasn't targeted. Taking a few clients that were "wrong" for me cured me of that. I began to define my "perfect client" and then started to notice flags that told me that someone didn't fit my definition.
Eight Advantages of Fundraising Letters Over Other Methods
1. Personal
Fundraising letters are about as personal as you can get with a donor without meeting face to face or talking on the phone. Unlike special events, fundraising letters let you have a one-on-one "meeting" with each donor.
Secret of Strategy - Part 1
I'll bet you think you already have a strategy.
Matrix Web Sites - Scam or NOT?
While I am not talking about the movie "Matrix", you may be wondering like many others if Matrix Web Sites are Legal!
Adapting Blog Technologies To Corporate E-Newsletters
Every January, trade publications put out a list of predictions for the coming year. They discuss products, services and trends that they think will change the way business is done, labeling these "disruptive technologies."
The idea of disruptive technologies comes from Clayton Christensen's 1997 book, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. A disruptive technology is a method, procedure, skill, device, or material that redefines the competitive standards. Note that the technology doesn't have to be a physical item and that it often forces us to re-examine the way we work.
InfoWorld's list of disruptive technologies for 2003 included open source, self-service CRM, digital identity, and my personal favorite, Weblogs. How can a simple, Web-based journal be disruptive?
For starters, it's worth describing what a Weblog is. Basically, a Weblog or "blog" is a personally created, online, time-stamped web page that includes the thoughts, ideas, and comments of the "blogger." The musings are usually brief, but they are published frequently and consistently. People can subscribe to receive the blog updates via e-mail. Often, the blogger is an expert on the subject he/she is discussing.
At first glance, it doesn't appear that blogs would be at all disruptive. So why all the hype? If we look closely at the structure and intent of blogs as a communications tool, we can see some powerful ideas at work.
Blogs are a direct, one-to-many vehicle for communicating ideas. They expand an individual's ability to communicate. They are fresh and timely. The blogger, in order to maintain interest, must communicate often. Blogs enable a single person to share ideas, insights, and useful knowledge with an audience. Thanks to the Web, the audience can be a global one.
Whenever a new tool or process-such as e-mail- expands communications, the effects are far-reaching and dramatic. Even though blogs have been around for 3-4 years, they could be the next big thing.
Blogs Are The "Real Voice"
Two important characteristics of blogs are that they are written by a person who is knowledgeable and passionate about the topic, and that they are written in a "real voice." This is a cosmic shift from the marketing and public relations materials that are the staple of business communications.
Often, when information goes through a formal marketing or PR process, the end result is an attractive, expensive, stale, diluted document written in corporate speak. This result is generally due to the processes that evolved to accommodate the costs and standards of print technology, rather than to the incompetence or malevolence of corporate communicators. The edge, the authenticity, and the voice of the professional speaking to his fellow professionals is lost.
Blogs offer the human voice that can be loud, controversial, and even wacky. But the realness of the blog inspires trust and piques people's curiosity. A blog can create a community and a dynamic discussion.
If you are a product manager working in the chemical products industry, chances are that you would rather hear about the real experiences of other product managers in your industry than read a glossy marketing piece put out by the marcom department. Blogs fit this communications requirement perfectly.
Blogs Are Simple
Weblogs are easy for people to publish, read and respond to. They can foster a community of like-minded individuals and be the catalyst for spirited discussions. Blogs are an inherently proactive form of communications. Weblog participants can subscribe to receive scheduled postings to the blog. Weblogs are inexpensive to produce and they can include a variety of multimedia content (audio, video, files, etc.) and hypertext links that add value to the discussion.
Blogs Empower The Individual
There are a host of tools on the Internet that make blogging a snap! Blogs empower a single person to capitalize on the reach and ubiquity of the Web. And they don't require the investment or recurring costs of print technologies.
Blogs Empower The Enterprise
Blogs empower the knowledgeable people within a company to share their insights, know-how, and expertise. The value to a corporation is that this knowledge can be organized, distributed, and leveraged to increase the value of different product and service offerings to the customer.
If a corporation is going to use a blog, however, it should understand that controlling the content of the discussion is difficult. If you want an authentic exchange, you have to be willing to accept the stone-throwing and critical comments that often occur in a blog. This requires extending trust and giving up some of the control a company would normally have when it publishes a press release or hosts its own online forum, for example. The upside is that people will listen to a real voice.
Adapting Blog Concepts To Your Newsletters
You can adapt blog technologies to your corporate electronic newsletters by taking advantage of the underlying concepts. You can, for example:
* Publish a small amount of well-organized information frequently and regularly
* Include content from individuals who are knowledgeable and passionate about their work
* Make it easy for your employees to communicate directly in their own, human voice
* Respect the reader by making sure your e-newsletter provides value and that he/she wants to receive it.
E-newsletters geared towards educating a marketplace, rather than those focused on advertising or marketing, turn out to be particularly effective. E-newsletters offer an affordable, direct way for the experts in a company to communicate with an audience. This means that a product manager or an engineer can enhance the flow of information and make it more accessible to those who want it.
Think of your channel and the information needs of your partners. Your company has a wealth of information that would help them sell your products more effectively. There is much insight within your partner community that could be leveraged throughout the channel. And your technical experts and engineers have critical knowledge and understanding that everyone could utilize.
What's often missing is an easy way for the "know-how" keepers to capture their knowledge, organize it, and deliver it. The best e-newsletters are written in a real voice, not in corporate speak.
Two years ago, the book The Cluetrain Manifesto shook up the business community (see http://www.cluetrain.com/book.html). The revelation? That business is about humans. As Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Petzinger Jr. writes in the foreword: "I was dumbstruck. There in a few pages, I read a startlingly concise summary of everything I'd seen in twenty-one years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist for my newspaper. The idea that business, at bottom, is fundamentally human. That engineering remains second-rate without aesthetics. That natural, human conversation is the true language of commerce. That corporations work best when the people on the inside have the fullest contact possible with people on the outside."
It turns out that the human "voice" is an underserved or ignored need. In a world of 6+ billion inhabitants, the individual craves to speak and to be heard.
References
Blogs As Disruptive Tech: How Weblogs Are Flying Under The Radar Of The Content Management Giants, By John Hiler, CEO, Webcrimson, http://www.webcrimson.com/ourstories/blogsdisruptivetech.Htm
Making Room For Disruptive And Emergent Technologies, By Hugh Blackmer, Science Librarian, Washington & Lee University, http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/sabb/nitle2.html*
Blogs As Disruptive Innovation: What A Brave New World Blogging Is Building!, by Dr. James V. McGee, Professor, The Kellogg School Of Management,
http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/2002/05/15.html
Weblogs At Harvard Law, Bookmark List For ABCD Weblogs Meeting, By Dave Winer,
http://Blogs.Law.Harvard.Edu/Stories/Storyreader$199
Is Most Marketing by Small Businesses KILLING THEM?
I just collected my mail. As usual, more than 80% of it was junk. Marketing junk.
Your Plan For Marketing Success
The most important, yet overlooked aspect of marketing is an actual written marketing plan A business simply cannot succeed without marketing. Whether you are a one person business or have 50 employees, you simply must have a marketing plan to succeed.
Turbo-Charge Your Viral Marketing- Five Easy Ways
The world of marketing has changed. With increasingly better educated and more skeptical consumers, marketing methods must be increasingly accountable.
How to Conduct a Successful Fax Marketing Campaign
1. Focus your fax marketing on one objective
Why Market to Generation X?
Generation X"--the 40 million or so people born between 1965 and 1976--understands it is living in a world of uncertainty where neither the governŽment nor private employers offer lifetime financial security. This is, however, the next generation of responsible adults, bright young people with families to protect and educate...and nearly 40 years until retirement.
How to Turn a Marketing Calendar into Marketing Success!
Do you have a list of marketing ideas that you'd like to implement, but just never seem to get around to actually doing some of them? Who has the time?
|