The “father” of modern advertising, John Wanamaker, is attributed with a quote that goes, “"I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half"The quote, dating to the early portion of the last century, is outdated. The days of benignly neglectful insight are over with.
The fact is, if you’re not measuring your advertising, if you do any at all, or your marketing efforts, then your career as a marketer is probably going to be short-lived.
Who has the budget or time to throw stuff against the wall?
If you’re not managing your spend against results, well, Starbucks is re-tooling and likely needs some talented Baristas.
I don’t say that as an affront to anybody’s sensibilities, just simple reality.
At Compendium, our value proposition around blogging heavily (READ: Very Heavily) is oriented towards using business blogging and content generation as a part of a lifecycle that generates quantifiable conversion against any number of metrics that you establish for your organization.
It’s just good business to require metrics for your sales and marketing efforts. If you can do so while being “authentic” and speaking in a human voice then you’re well down the road.
The conversational aspect of blogging is critical because blogging allows you to break down the linear value chain that has sales or customer facing people as the keeper of the keys to customer relationships.
Just yesterday I was talking with a client who is slow out of the blogging gate because, quote – unquote, they are busy getting customer feedback and doing product enhancements. They don’t currently have time to blog.
Hmmm … methinks that blogging is the perfect way to engage with your customers in a meaningful way, and, oh, yeah, do so in a conversational tone that is less product development and more soft engagement.
If you’re a customer of Starbucks, it’s almost impossible to read the business section of the newspaper, or any number of blogs, and not be aware that Starbucks is re-tooling their business—more client focus, less falling into the trap of consumer mental commoditization in the face of consumer price pressure in the fast-casual niche.
To that end, they recently launched a pretty slick web site found at: www.mystarbucksidea.com
The site allows customers to post feedback and new-product suggestions.
No, it’s not a blog, but it easily could be. And, frankly, for most small businesses, you wouldn’t need to go to the extent of developing a site of this level of sophistication anyway.
Just blog. Ask questions. Be relevant. Be genuine. Engage in a conversation with your customers. You’ll be surprised at the latent passion and feedback that exists for your business if you just tap the vein.
Image Credit: Logic + Emotion
