Just ask your mom!.. and save all those marketing research dollars

I'm convinced that some marketers have gone out and spent $250,000 on marketing research when all they really needed to do was pick up the phone and "call mom".It's not that spending lots of money to watch what people say & do behind 1-way mirrors isn't interesting, it's just that the entire process of conducting research can take forever...

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Innovation via your inner consumer voice

All of us walk through the world with our own mental filters... our filters determine what we pay attention to and what we block out... when I walk down the streets of New York with a certain friend of mine from college, I notice all the dogs that trot past us... he notices the different architectural styles that imbue the many buildings...

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Marketers & the "us vs. them" illusion... take 3

Another helpful tool for marketers to use to further undermine the "us vs. them" illusion is as easy as a few Google searches and a couple of mouse clicks.Open your web browser, hop onto Google or your favorite search engine, and track down some discussion boards or social networking sites that pertain to your industry and read away. You'll...

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Marketers and the "us vs. them" illusion... take 2

As I have written about in a recent post the "us vs. them illusion" is a powerful force that blasts its way into the minds of marketers while in the workplace. Marketers entering the hallowed halls of their office buildings is the corporate equivalent of Clark Kent stepping into a telephone booth and transforming himself into a completely...

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Marketers and the "us vs. them" illusion

As marketers there seems to exist a cognitive split between our work brains and our non-work brains, which I refer to as the "us vs. them illusion". Our work brains view customers as "other"; an assemblage of abstract people whom we often glob together in our minds and try to "do things to" in order to influence their behaviors in ways that...

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Focus on Product BENEFITS not features

Features, features, features... whether a product (e.g., a car) or a service (e.g., a vacation resort), it's sure to have plenty of features... bells & whistles... "goods"... "extras"...I often find my eyes crossing as I read through descriptions of products or services. They often seem to be written for "insiders" - either people who...

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CoNtEXT iS KiNg

All good marketing requires a rich understanding of context - environmental and personal.We are always embedded in a context. The time of day; the weather; the people we are with or not with; our location - at home, at the doctor, in a store, at work; our present goals, objectives and activities; our current emotional states & energy...

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What is customer segmentation?

Like so many buzz words in business & marketing, "customer segmentation" is one of those terms that is interpreted by folks to mean many different types of things. If the word "segmentation" were blurted out in a room of 20 business people, chances are it would conger up 20 different images.So what is customer segmentation, and how...

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