I read articles regularly whenever I find time. While reading an article on promomagazine I came across some interesting insights which I thought of sharing them with you all.
1 – I’m not sure in Sri Lanka how many firms measure the word of mouth for their brand. Measuring the online buzz is easy but identifying and measuring offline buzz is not an easy job. But remember 90% of the buzz goes offline.I observed that the trend now prevails is not about mouth to mouth conversation but it is all about visual. Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz says Word of Mouth isn’t always Spoken, but sometimes its Visual. The objects and visual can create visual buzz.. It is not just the word…Because buzz is not just telling others but more and more it move towards showing.
The simple idea behind this is, by making the brand more observant and visible to the people, the brands can increase the likelihood of people conveying the message about it and enhance the sale.
The above example actually happened to me as well. I usually visit my friend’s place, who has a Dell Laptop. I saw a small poster hanged on his wall regarding this brand. But we never spoke about this laptop. Whenever I go there I always noticed that poster and Dell became one of my well observed brands. This created an interest in me and I purchased a Dell Laptop for my usage.
So what Sri Lankan brands should do with these? Marketing communication, product quality , good relationship management will create a positive buzz. But according to Emanuel Rosen, he says the brands should make sure where ever the customers go the brand should be visual to them. It can be a calendar, desk diary, well framed brand photo, pens, stationeries, wall clocks, and other observable stuffs.
2 – Make the business crystal clear. In an article written by Rob BonDurant, he says brands need to be transparent the way they do the business. All the business activities should be well communicated. The best example for this is Patagonia, where their production is totally environmentally sustainable business. In the web site they clearly mention what they do to sustain the environment in production. Still most of the organization in Sri Lanka practice CSR and Environmental business practices. I have not come across any organization like Patagonia in Sri Lanka.
If you want to create a sustainable word of mouth recommendation then BonDurant recommends that business practice is storytelling than marketing.
I have noticed a similar sort of strategy used by Brandix. A well dedicated page which shows this sort of activities and their commitment towards environment and the business practice storytelling.
In the end it is all about interactive marketing
In this year and coming decade two way communications with the targeted and existing customers going to be replaced by one way marketing methods. It is going to be all about interactive marketing. Businesses need to closely interact with the customers to know their exact need and wants. It is not about doing a marketing research but closely building a relationship with people, even though they are not your customers.
Given below are some methods, but some of these may not be suitable for Sri Lanka but some might. The mobile and internet have already created platforms for firms to interact with the customers.
According to emarketer, in the year 2009, there was a growth of 18.1% and 9.2% in mobile and internet respectively. On the other hand, advertising through TV declined by -10.1%, newspapers by -18.7% and radio by -11.7%.
Hence the firms have to concentrate on the following:
Social Media Marketing, mobile marketing and loyalty marketing are known concept for everyone. But it is time for firms to further focus on Neuromarketing. Because for every business it is important to know what their target audience and customers really perceive about their business. Doing research will not make any sense in genuine opinion of the customers. But using neuro marketing firms can study the customers/ consumers sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. Anyway this is related with research but the research use more advanced technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalograph.
The other important one is behavioral marketing. Firms should stop bombarding the customers with irrelevant advertisements. Even in Sri Lanka we come across many advertisements which make no sense. But it time for Sri Lankan marketers to think about the relevancy in the marketing campaign they do. Now customers are modernized and they seek for new things, new experiences, new things to try etc…Firms need to be more creative in their communication. Bombarding them with the same ads repeatedly is not worth. Creative approach stimulating the customer sensitive is a must these days. The ads and other communications should be relevant to their life style choices. This will be more effective to do….
Ragulan Tharmakulasingam 