NGI Direct Consumer Engagement Themes

Companies are beginning to survey the landscape for Direct Consumer Engagement themes.

- Invite Your Customers Behind the Firewall

• Connect product development, marketing and brand management directly to product users
• Open up, let product development people blog / wiki and allow consumers to see, comment, etc. There is a conversation out there about your product - are you hearing it? Are you monitoring the blogosphere?

- Foster Community

• Enable communities of interest around particular content Foster community of niche interest using rich media content and applications -- Enable user profiles, discussion groups, user-contributed content
• Foster "social networking"
  
• Enable "community self-support“
  
• Let the users who know your products well give tips to others who know them less well. Let customers suggest new ways of using products

- Seed the Influencers, Deputize the Bloggers

• Use the community to generate buzz, but beware of "astroturf" (artificially created grass roots marketing)
• There is nothing wrong with being upfront about attempts to influence the top 50 bloggers in a given space. Send them promo samples and information - build a relationship with them - but don't hide the intent of the campaign
• Ask bloggers to disclose any incentive you provide. Watch out for several recent Microsoft snafus involving paying bloggers to use the phrase "People-Ready Business."
• Watch out for "flogs" (fake blogs) which pretend not to be written by employees of the company or marketing firms engaged by the company - Kill The Corporate Voice
• Customers are deadened to the language of traditional corporate marketing. The best solution is to let people speak for themselves.  Creating one corporate blogger – the CEO or CTO also falls short. Limiting blogs to only one voice puts the company at a severe disadvantage.
• There are numerous relevant topics that any company could be effectively commenting on and driving awareness and increasing search rankings. By limiting themselves to only one voice the company is allowing competitors to take advantage of this opportunity

- Set Your Data Free

• Nearly every company has data customers want The traditional marketing approach is to guard these data and only share it with prospects in a one-on-one meeting.
• The data helps establish the credibility your company has to provide the product or service in question.
• The best place to start to understand what data are useful is to focus on questions prospects ask you. - Syndicate, syndicate, syndicate Enhance campaign presence on the internet, not just company site(s)
• Syndicate RSS, make data widely available - look for opportunities to sponsor existing communities (podcasts, vodcasts, community sites) in ways other than the traditional banner ad. - Engage beyond email marketing, webinars, and press releases “on the wire”
• Convert it all to RSS, Podcasts, Vodcasts. Why not let marketing managers demonstrate what they are excited about and working on.

- The 30 second spot is dying

• Networked applications represent a much more vibrant, dynamic, and lasting method for engaging customers and effecting consumer behavior