Greg pointed me to an excellent video on "An Economic Response To Unsolicited Communication" by Marshall Van Alstyne about e-mail spam. While this is about email spam, I believe this has profund implications on:
Take a look:
Consumer generated chatter is increasingly becoming an important source of purchasing decisions.
More than 50% of respondents to the Compete study said they used consumer-generated media to make or narrow their choices, 23% used CGM to confirm a decision and 15% used CGM to determine what their top choice should be.
Some key findings from the study:
* 71% of car and travel consumers are influenced by CGM
* Only 35% of the same consumers are influenced by brand
* Auto buyers prefer consumer reviews and ratings over company websites (32%) and car dealers (32%)
* 2/3 of travelers prefer consumer reviews.
Compete estimates that around $2 billion from the Travel Spend is influenced by CGM.
“CGM is money in the bank for marketers who know how to tap into the new currency around CGM,” said Cynthia Stephens, director of marketing at Compete, Inc (in a statement). “Marketers will need to go beyond buzz-tracking tools to analyze and connect with in-market consumers in a new landscape. Companies that follow this course have nothing to fear about losing control of the marketing message.”
You, me, us...we're all Time's Person of the Year. Well, technically speaking not all of us (more on that in a bit). Time has selected, 'You' as Person of the Year because of the revolution in user-generated-content that is increasingly influencing society.
MSN has launched demographic search which looks quite interesting to me. In online advertising, the demographics of the user is always in question as there is a lot of 'junk' registered data. Even though this is based on an index file of MSN search users, it can serve as a useful predictor of the kind of sites one would want to advertise.
Here's the link
Business Week has a great article on how customers can be involved and enagaged in every business, if only companies have the intent.
Passionate customers can transform your company. Here's how to make them your secret weapon:
Each week, Greg Selkoe, founder of streetwear retailer Karmaloop, and a handful of his employees gather in his office overlooking Boston Common to review new designs. The group votes on which, if any, of the T-shirts, jackets, and other clothing should be added to the line Karmaloop sells in its Newbury Street store and online.What's worth noting is that the designs are submitted by customers. Since October, 37 designs, out of about 1,000 that have been submitted, have been added to the 33-employee, $4 million company's offerings.
Selling clothing dreamt up by customers is just one facet of a business model that brings customers so far into Karmaloop's DNA that they have become, in effect, extensions of the company's sales, marketing, and product development teams. Karmaloop has an 8,000-strong army of customers who proselytize the brand and get discounts or cash when they, or someone they've referred, make a purchase. Members of this "street team," called reps, also upload images, photos, or artwork to Karmaloop's site to make company stickers or banners other reps can download. "The reps are evangelists for our site," says Selkoe. And they're doing their job: Fewer than 1% of Karmaloop's customers are reps, but their purchases and those they inspire account for 15% of sales.
CEOs have been talking about customer loyalty for years, but entrepreneurs such as Selkoe know that making people truly loyal to your company—to make them really, really like you—takes a lot more than a frequent buyer program. It means nothing less than getting people so jazzed about your brand that they become engaged contributors to your company's sales, marketing, and innovation efforts, and ultimately its success. How does that happen? By knocking down the walls between "you" and "them" and creating a larger, looser community that is inviting to both your customers and your employees.
TechSmith's Weber was such a fervent believer in the power of a customer community that three years ago she persuaded the company's president to create her chief evangelist position. She then built customer advisory panels by including customers so happy with products that they'd written "love letters" to the company over the years, as well as those she found on blogs and through customer referrals. But Weber didn't shy away from the company's critics. Among the panelists is Paul Pival, distance education librarian at the University of Calgary in Alberta, who had written on his personal blog that he found Camtasia Studio, a TechSmith product that records keystrokes and mouse movements made on a computer, slow and difficult to use. "I was surprised she sought me out," says Pival of Weber's overture. "It was a little bit gutsy, but ultimately successful." After getting involved with the company's customer panels, Pival says he realized the product had been improved.