2006 trend: capitalizing on customer insights

It is the right time of the year to take a look back at what we thought were going to be the trends for this ending year. McKinsey is doing it in a number of areas -- read Ten trends to watch in 2006 for all of it -- but one of them caught my attention as we discussed it many times in Marketing 2.0 -- check User Generated Content label and on Marketing 2.0.

Capitalizing on customer insights is probably the one dimension that gave Marketing in the web 2.0 era, a.k.a. Marketing 2.0, a clear paradigm shift. Read McKinsey Capitalizing on customer insights article about it. As McKinsey points out, we need to embed customer insights in the organization's key decisions from sales planning to marketing investment. It cannot remain anymore an isolated research belonging to a specific division within our marketing department.

When considering on-line marketing and customer engagement, it even becomes a real-time discipline. Yes, Marketing 2.0 is to be managed real-time, leading to a real-time business adaptation. No need here to even remind you about these newly created companies betting their full business model on this user generated content (Flickr, YouTube, ...).

Capitalizing on customer insights is no longer "nice to have" but clearly moved in the "must have" category for all of our businesses.

Integrate an end-to-end viral marketing to your Marketing 2.0 plan

Viral Marketing is an integral part of Marketing 2.0. Thus agencies are starting to exploit the lack of integrated tools and strategies for you to have a full viral marketing set of tactics embedded in your campaigns. Here are some of the available ones I noticed:

• Affinitive - Word of Mouth Marketing, Technology and Strategic Solutions
• Informative - Your Customers are talking, do you listen?
• iUpload - Customer conversation system
• neighborhood america - Engage, listen, act

Some marketers have a tendency to think that viral marketing is just about creating an e-mail buzz or post a funny video on YouTube. DON'T! Viral marketing is more than just one isolated tactic or a trendy gimmick to sparkle on your existing plan. It is an entire dimension to your on-going marketing strategy.

The difficult part of it is to address influencers as a demographic target. In fact influencers usually aren't. As Regis McKenna coined it many years ago, in his famous book The Regis Touch - 1985, influencers include all individuals between the vendor and its prospect impacting the decision to buy. And as Regis stated 20 years ago: 90% of the world is influenced by the other 10%. The good news in the Web 2.0 era, is that we now have means to identify and enroll influencers over the web. Some call it building communities - read Isabel's post about it as an example.

Whatever it takes don't miss it: integrate end-to-end viral marketing to your Marketing 2.0 plan. Make sure you identify end engage over time influencers to maximize Marketing ROI, especially if you're dealing in B2B Marketing. Don't forget to let them talk and listen.

Marketing 2.0 is real-time: Google after the $20 billion US radio advertising

It's now effective, last Thursday Google began limited test of radio advertising. The system resulting from Google's earlier acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting (Jan 2006), extends the AdWord platform with the ability for advertisers to create and manage radio advertising campaigns as an additional channel to their web campaigns. Sounds like integrated marketing made easy.

Google covers 800+ radio stations in the US targeting 5,000+, 87% US territory coverage, 19 of the top 25 markets and reports 300 Million impressions weekly.

It operates in 4 steps - read more in Donna Bogatin's blog from ZDNet:

"Step 1) Station inventory management system and studio log.
Step 2) Google links electronically with stations to search for inventory that fits advertiser criteria.
Step 3) Inventory is paired with advertiser requests.
Step 4) Google delivers automated order to radio station and reserves inventory."

Check out AdWords Help Center for some more.

My immediate reaction is to relate to integrated marketing of course, thinking that over time we'll have a choice of web based platform to pilot our integrated marketing campaign in real-time.

When you combine this idea with local search marketing, GPS rapid growth and mobile phone as marketing devices, we're getting closer to 1:1 marketing for the masses - remember Minority Report's changing billboards ads?

And finally, it looks like real-time advertising campaign measurement and adaptation is making its way beyond web advertising to encompass radio and I'm pretty sure TV in a short while.

Marketing 2.0 is all about integrated and measured marketing with the ability for a brand to react real-time to its audience behaviors. No longer can we have weekly or monthly meetings with our media planning agencies to figure out what to do next. Marketing 2.0 is real-time.