Outstanding piece on integrated marketing communications from Anna Barcelos on the Spin Sucks blog today.
In a nutshell, her point is that we need to quit sorting customers using demographic, geographic and psychographic pigeonholes and instead begin analyzing data to group customers based on their behavior.
For example, two 40-somethings living next door to each other and earning roughly the same income may actually have very different buying patterns and will respond to different marketing messages.
Using traditional metrics, these two guys look exactly alike, but while Joe is married and drives a minivan, Harry is single and drives a sports car. You can bet that they’re buying habits will diverge when it comes to certain products and services.
Barcelos urges companies to aggregate data from ALL departments (not just sales and marketing) and then use this data to group customers based on their behaviors.
Marketing and sales strategies can then be adapted to individualize relationships with customers that engender long-term loyalty and advocacy for your products and services.
As anyone who’s had to convince marketing and sales types to play nicely together, this can be a challenge.
I’d recommend starting with the CEO and CFO…because the numbers don’t lie and the promise of a higher return on investment tends to get people’s attention.
Meanwhile Back at the Ranch is written by Bill Patterson, president of Kansas City, Mo.-based Nation Ranch, a strategic consulting firm specializing in brand management, public relations and crisis communications.
Bill:
Thanks so much for the awesome summary and points about my blog post. Companies need to get away from status quo with standard data that really tells us nothing. We witness this every day with the junk mail and communications that we receive. These companies really don’t “know” us at all and they have the opportunity to! No excuses.
Enjoy your weekend!