Over the weekend, I attended a great conference at my alma mater, Kellogg. The conference was packed with great key note speakers and some of the best panels I have seen. This quick blog post will give you the highlights from my point of view.
Competition: Study your competitors and find out what they are doing RIGHT! We spend too much useless time finding fault with our competition. They’re not idiots (usually). Learn from them.
Data Overload: The amount of data we have now is both a help and a hindrance. There is a definite trend towards micro-marketing. Now I’m not talking about the postcard you get that reads: “Hello Thomas H. Williams! We would like to share something with you Thomas. Thomas, have you ever…” I’m talking about using data about my behaviors to serve up products and information that more closely matches what I actually want to know or buy.
The downside of too much data is you have a lot of opportunity to screw things up. You also can miss the really valuable stuff which is buried by the sheer volume of data you have. Be sure you have a really good analyst. Someone who knows how to cut through the junk and make useful information out of the huge pile.
Marketing & Privacy: Be careful how you balance your data and consumer’s desire for privacy. With access to all the data, from Point of Sale to social networks, you can easily cross the line and deliver creepy marketing or customer service. You must balance the creepy factor with the helpful factor.
Content is Critical: With the saturation of content on the internet (which is growing faster than Moore’s law!) Good Content will be more important than ever. You could say Content is still King.
Involve your people: Lastly, don’t be afraid to embrace social media and give your people a voice. There was one panelist who really stuck out to me as someone who really “got it”. Her name was Jen Houston from Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. Jen said something which, to date, I have only hear myself say. In response to the notion that you should hire one community manager to handle all your social media, Jen retorted: Empower your people with Social Media. Your People ARE your Brand. If you are afraid to do this, you don’t have a social media problem. You have a Hiring Problem. (paraphrased).
Nicely put Jen. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
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