Reinvention of Your Brand - On the Web
We all thought we knew everything there was to know about marketing and branding until the web came along. 1960 saw the creation of the Four Ps of Marketing, Product, Pricing, Place and Promotion. Those classic Four Ps have been replaced by the Four Es,
- Experience (you have to be involved while the customer makes a buying decision),
- Everyplace (you have to me communicating continuously, and modifying along the way, in order to figure out how to close the sale),
- Exchange (yov've got to give more information - maybe, exclusive information like new product information before the launch, or maybe letting the customer actually design the product she buys) - to keep a customer) and
- Evangelism (share an idea with a contact in such a way the he wants to pass it on, to share it with his friends - who become your friends) (Moffitt, 48-49).
The Four Es are great. And, as you can well imagine, there are strategic steps (really, just one step) you'd better take before you focus on the Four Es. That is to focus what you're about before beginning to build out your Four Es. In a way, the fun part of a web effort is just doing it. Ask two questions first (Moffitt, 90):
- Just what is your focus, and, this is a new twist on things,
- How do you focus on your customer before you focus on your company?
This last question isn't much different than normal strategy. You've got a couple more questions to answer (Moffitt, 92):
- Where are you going? What are your business goals and objectives?
- What are you values? Then, what are your customer's values, what is their lifestyle, and what are their desires?
- What does your brand mean in the community, yes? But, what does your brand mean to you? The community is interested in commoditizing things. If you know your your brand and what it means to you first, that'll influence what the outside community thinks of you, and how they react to you.
- What is the value you want to deliver to your new community, to your customers? Is it apparent in what you are offering? If you don't know what it is, you won't be able to deliver it, or your offering won't be interesting.
One final question, or comment, really (Moffitt, 97): My bet is that the size of the community you end up building on the web really isn't that large. It's probably going to be less than two thousand members. If you decide to keep things small early on, you are able to build in the intimacy to what you are doing early on in the process. Make it focused enough on your community and you will be able to open a dialog that remains a dialog over a longer time frame, a good thing.
Reference
Moffitt, Sean and Mike Dover. Wiki Brands. Reinventing Your Company In a Customer-Driven Marketplace. McGraw-Hill. 2011.