Connecting with Empowered Consumers

Reaching Everyone?

I work with Commercial Printers every day that are printing jobs for businesses that are trying to market or sell their product to you and me, the end consumer. Some of them are helping those customers with more effective marketing by using data to target the right message to the right customer at the right time.

For example, when my daughter Ashley turned 5, she received a coupon from “Build a Bear” for $10 off her “Ashley bear.” What was neat about this piece was it had a picture of the same bear she purchased the prior year. I will say that as a parent, I wasn’t very happy with this coupon because the $10 actually caused me to spend over $30 on a stuffed animal! I had another fun experience recently where I felt I was targeted pretty well. My wife drives a Honda Accord. At the time, it had roughly 60,000 miles on it. We get a free oil change coupon in the mail. Now the postcard had our Honda on the front and it said, “Kim, since it’s time to bring your Honda in for Service, we thought you would enjoy a free coupon.” Well, she did use that “free” coupon and brought it in. And the oil change was in fact free. My only comment was she also rotated tires, did alignment and was told she would probably need new tires in the next 5,000 miles (and so they gave us their price for 4 new tires). Was she targeted because she had 60,000 miles? What a great use of data.

I am a huge fan of target marketing. In fact, when done right, I believe it is the best use of marketing dollars. Having said that, I am still amazed how many of my customers that do variable printing like this, still don’t use multi media tools like email, facebook, twitter, blogging, linkedin, plaxo and on and on. I wonder, are they connecting with all empowered customers?

For example, I recently purchased a 46 inch LCD TV. At the place I purchased this TV, I asked about installation. For the TV with mount, installation costs exceeded $375, not including HDMI wires, electric above the fire place and so on. My wife said to check on Craigslist. So I did. I went to my city and searched “install lcd tv” and had 6 ads posted in the past 7 days. Two weeks later, my TV was hung, electric was run and total cost out of pocket was $250 including mount, electric, hdmi cables and everything else.

People want to be communicated to in different ways. As a marketing expert, are you taking advantage of all the tools available to help market to your potential customers, all your potential customers? It’s in exploring this question that I see so many opportunities. Do you?

Scott Titus has been with Xerox since 1995 and is a part business consultant, part one-man marketing machine and part sales professional.  Titus has been among the top three sales representatives at Xerox Corporation for eight quarters running.  He produces a monthly e-newsletter, writes his own blog at Ideas, Ideas, Ideas and creates his own Web videos. His current approach includes helping his customers develop “their own multichannel communications” and spends much of his time consulting with clients about their business initiatives and how marketing tools can help drive additional revenues for them and their customers. He has been featured in industry articles on such topics as “Trust Equity” and also made Xerox’s Profit Accelerator Magazine two out of the three volumes to date.