The title of this article, "Marketing is dead", is really arresting but after the completed reading, I feel that the title is only a stunt. Bill Lee, the author, doesn't really mean that the marketing doesn't work any more but promotes another two marketing strategies, peer influence-based and community oriented marketing.
Does these two kinds of marketing strategies matter much today? I vote "yes" on peer influence-based marketing but "no" on community oriented marketing. Here goes my own interpretations.
On one hand, the effect of peer influence-based marketing is incredible especially when combined with internet and social media.
Bill Lee gives two great examples, Mr. Excel of Microsoft "MVP" and National Instruments, to prove the importance of customer influence. I couldn't agree more at this point. It reminds me of the "Nettwerk" case we discussed two weeks ago in MKT566 course. The Nettwerk developed the leaders of genre tribes and offered them the new hit songs or newest information of Nettwerk's artists. The followers of the tribe leaders can access to the information of beloved artists and the tribe leaders can generate prestige among its followers. In this way, Nettwerk creates buzz for its artists in the tribes and helps the tribe leaders built social capital at the same time.
This is a good marketing model but can this model be influential without internet? Definitely it can but I am sure that the influence of peer influence-based marketing will be much weaker. How to reach broad peers? How can more and more peers reach each other quickly and effectively? Which medium is the best to generate discussion and share real time peer experience? What about the convenience for peers to check peer advise? I trust internet and social media are the best answers to these questions.
On another hand, I think these question can be forward to the community-oriented marketing. It is absolutely that buying history and experience from family, friends, relatives, colleagues and classmates matter much in new purchase deciding. But I view the community-oriented marketing can only work well in local physical sales. It is more likely a city-to-city marketing strategy. In another word, community-oriented marketing is a basic component of marketing world which serves small amount of customers.
Moreover, I view marketing on the web information sharing platforms is the trend rather than marketing in the physical community.
To sum up, I view community-oriented marketing is useful to create new purchase from customers who are not viewed as target customers before and peer influence-based marketing is more effective to reach broad potential customers.
Article: "Marketing is Dead" by Bill Lee
Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/marketing_is_dead.html
You are right, Iris, peer influence-based marketing is really convincing and persuasive. I always consult my frinends and family who have previous experience before I purchase a product. However, I am afraid I can hardly agree with your opinion on community-oriented marketing. I think it is also helpful when I decide to buy a product. For example, I was considering to buy a watch a week ago, and I went to a Chinese watch community in U.S. People there discuss about the watch brand from all over the world, and they compare the price and models from different parts of the world. It was really useful as a reference for me. Community is not restricted in a specific region. Hmm... Maybe to some certain product, it is...
ReplyDeleteActually, I think community-oriented marketing is more like a word-to-mouth buzz-generating marketing method of traditional marketing. Do you agree with me?
DeleteIris, I agree with you that community has a lot of leaks right now. Based on current technologies, we can only build community in a very small area. Maybe companies would like to build many communities all around the world in order to reach as large as populations. However, communities are so hard to control. They are organized, guided social group! Even government cannot easily control them! The only thing company can do is beg they get a good brand image on its products.
ReplyDeleteIris,
ReplyDeleteI like your analysis on the topic. However, I kind of disagree with you on the community-oriented marketing topic. I believe that the born of this kind of marketing is due to American culture. I think in the States, community plays an important role in people’s daily life. People in the same community have similar life patterns and hobbies. They have great influences between each other. The born of the community-oriented marketing is based on this need. It’s a similar strategy of “the word of mouth”. Marketing investments on community will earn benefit finally.