Archive for May, 2009

Brand & relationship building activity online. Not directly selling your product or service to your cutomers. No special offer, mega discount and no screaming call to action saying ‘Buy this right now!’ So what’s the point?

Some marketers view brand building activity as a waste of time, money and resource. It’s not trackable some say, you can’t monitor the impact is has on your brand say others.

We’ll why not try this next time you’ve got a sales promotion in the pipeline.

Split your database 50/50. Send half of the database some handy updates about your product or service. Perhaps a little while later send them some tips, videos or a feedback platform they can interactive with. Send the other half of the database nothing. Then when you email out that sales promotion see which half of the database is the most responsive. My guess is it will be the 50% that you spent time talking too and building up a relationship with.

It’s important to win the permission to ask your audience the difficult questions. In our experience to get that permission requires a little brand & relationship building activity.

I have found really informed article on folksonomies and taxonomies at FUMSI today here. The author comes down on the side of a blended approach as do we, and adds some useful insight into how this can fail.

I would also expand on the use of folksonomies for marketing insight, whether it is for SEO purposes, i.e. getting at the keywords/keyphrases that you haven’t considered – or getting further into the personas of your visitors/customers.

This is also an important consideration for intranets and extranets, where the author knows their content as the say the “Maintenance Manual v01.02″, and the users know it as “the blue book”.

I think that this is also, in the context of the online world, an example of the top down or bottom up approach challenge.

Once again a mixture of both is what you should aim for – of course whoever commissions the site has expert (read taxonomy) knowledge, that can at its worst manifest itself as a case of “I know best, not my customers” and may make things hard to find for the non-expert visitor.

Conversely taking the opposite viewpoint that starts from the “I know little about the product/service” can end up talking down to the visitor and may end up failing to deliver the site’s value.

The best sites cater for all visitors, understanding their differing personas and goals and delivering the best product/content for them.