Thursday, September 07, 2006

Marketing 2.0 manifesto early draft?

I was thinking of starting a Marketing 2.0 manifesto many times, with your help and feedback of course, but I guess this will take some time. As I was reading Guy Kawasaki's blog I found out a pretty good start, at least for small businesses, inspired by Ilana DeBare of the San Francisco Chronicle with this article: “Amateur reviews changing approach of small businesses.”

The pain we all feel is about making a decision where to have diner out, what plumber to call or which dentist should be allowed in our mouth. Here comes online review sites -- find out some here -- in a very Web 2.0 spirit, where consumers empower consumers. This in turn may signal the ending of the yellow pages. DeBare article ends with interesting pragmatic tactics that small businesses can use to take advantage of this new way of advertising and attracting more traffic to their business. Could be a good start for our Marketing 2.0 manifesto? Here are the ones I noticed:

-- Find out what people are saying about you on-line

-- Use reviews to improve your operations. (Don't get Dell'd)

-- Respond to unhappy customers. (idem)

-- Respond to happy customers, even adding a small gift to positive reviewers.

-- Encourage your customers to post reviews by mentioning these reviews to your regular customers.

-- The jury's out on incentives. Offer a rebate to reviewers, whether positive or negative, for their next purchase.

-- Use positive reviews in your marketing, just like Zagat's write-up found on restaurants front window.

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