Customer Marketing

The New Approach to Customer Marketing
in Marketing


There has been a lot of buzz over the past few years about a new form of marketing for a new marketing world.

Marketers such as Seth Godin have led a high profile assault on traditional marketing.

The reason is simple – the consumer landscape has changed radically over the past 10 years and will continue to do so, because mass markets are fragmenting into niche markets.

This means that mass advertising becomes poorly targeted, and capturing a significant niche allows for cheaper and more productive marketing.

With the change in practice comes a shift in attitude, as "old" marketing gives way to priorities of the new.

In their book Radical Marketing, Glen Rifkin and Sam Hill lay out their own set of rules for what they term Radical Marketing:


The company CEO is the primary marketer
Simplify marketing management
Direct interaction with customers
Don't rely on the averages of market research
Use only passionate marketers
Treat customers as individuals, not numbers
Permission build a community to market to
Rethink your targeting methods
Use common sense
Keep focused on your brand identity

This tends to reflect a more corporate view – that larger companies need to keep things simplified, and use staff who take a real and passionate interest in their work.

However, very niche market targeting is becoming the necessary life-blood for small business, where new marketing isn't simply about repositioning within new markets, but instead about capturing a spirit of entrepreneurial enterprise – where small remains most profitable where companies remain customer focused.

In short, new marketing is as much a rejection of corporate marketing, with it's impassionate image, disdain for the customer, and focus on numbers, not people.

New Marketing is therefore focused on a passionate customer-focused marketing concept, which is especially typified at Creating Passionate Users:

Focus on how the user kicks ass
Evangelize
Users have power
Users "own" the brand
Two-way conversation
Personal service
Word of mouth over advertising

In short, as the marketing environment changes, so marketing methods have to change – the mantra of New Marketing is that as markets become more vertical, then marketing must invest first in people.


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