Archive for June 2010
Should AT&T go back to school?
I’m a consumer. You’re a consumer. I work a lot, you probably do too. The last thing we want to do is try and calculate the time we spend every waking day driving to work, going to the bathroom. Imagine if your Television provider charged you by the minute, or your toilet charged you every time you had to relieve yourself.
Ok, the toilet might be extreme, but AT&T’s decision to try and alleviate its problem with infrastructure by altering its pricing setup for new users purchasing Internet usage on smartphones and the iPad, to me, goes against all rules for understanding consumer behavior.
This is marketing 101. The more you understand your customers wants and needs, and the easier it is you make it for your prospects and customers to buy; the more likely they will. This is the simplistic version, of course. Yet, I think I can make a safe assumption here:
AT&T…you may claim you’re saving consumers money with your new data usage plans; but you better get that PR machine rollin to counter the bad press. Why? Because, and I may be wrong…but with our busy lives…the last thing we want to do as consumers is calculate Megabytes and our data usage. It’s bad enough to figure our cell phone minutes used. This should be marketing 101…understanding consumer behavior….making it easy for prospects and customer to want to buy. This, doesn’t do that. People don’t want to think more than they have to. They’re busy enough as it is.
Opinions herein are soley those of the blogger and this blogger could be wrong. Blogger is not an AT&T customer (and probably won’t ever be). But this bloggers’ opinion is to send AT&T marketing people back to school.
Marketing…don’t just throw money at it!
You can throw it in a blender (we all know that’s been done). You can buy a full page ad. A great website helps.
But, does it create revenue?
Whether you are highly creative, spend money on advertising or build a great website; those things don’t mean your business will make money. Now, you and I both know that organizations big and small have done great things with creative online video, full page ads and interactive websites; but will it work for you????
Answer:
Probably not!
Why?
The technical term is ‘media fragmentation’. What does that mean? It means that the marketing focus is all over the board and money has been gambled on things that haven’t had any proper research. It means that your approach is SATURATED. It’s been done before, and your message or brand doesn’t “resonate” in the mind of the consumer. This doesn’t mean you won’t get “lucky”. Plently of small, medium and large organizations have built brand recognition and increased sales using those same tactics.
The problem is throwing money at it and hoping for the best. It is also the hurry and the lack of proper research.
If you are a small or medium sized business looking to market your products or services, throwing money at it might get you lucky; however, the proper market research and uncovering your customers true wants and needs will take you farther.
Like dating or relationships, “it’s complicated.” Yet, listen first, and join the conversation. Your business will not only save money, but you’ll find out more about your business, your competitors and what you can do, than any money can provide spending on a YouTube video, advertisement or fancy website. Lastly, if you are spending money, ask yourself this:
Are you measuring results?
Are they just in sales?
Are results directly tied to these tactics and have you set goals or benchmarks?
Or, are they just a hopeful result of your expenditures?
If your answer is no to linking spending with tactics, then it is time to revisit your marketing strategy.
It still gets complicated from there. We can talk about surveys, questionnaires, statistics, bias and error in market research till your blue in the face. The fact is, as a small business or medium sized business, you don’t have time to worry about that. However, it still pays dividends to do some research, ask and document your findings. Trust me, it works and it’s better than just throwing money at it and hoping for results.
Cheers,
Frankie
