Frankly, a lot of the business world, in the last 18 months, has looked like a custard pie fight, a lot of mess but nowhere near as much fun. Those people that think we are out of the woods yet, really are only seeing the trees! I’m concerned about the people that have lost their jobs and/or homes, but what scares me more is that we may not have learnt a damn sensible thing, especially in the finance industry. But hey ho what did we expect?

The little, tiny light at the end of the tunnel (or is that the train coming the other way?) is that the customer will demand a new way of doing things, at least some will. Most of us will go back to ‘customer as normal’ and ‘business as normal’ and ignore the inevitability. Disguised as our mythical view of an inability to change things.

Others, though, will create merry hell! They will demand integrity and transparency and that will change how brands are judged and how they are led by their managers/owners. Whilst business attempts to gain true customer loyalty, something it has bought in the past, they will have to, first, be loyal to their customers. A complete, fundamental shift in thinking. I think of how BT, Nat West and the utilities are going to do this? I also think of small business too!

Business in the past was valued on it’s financial performance, it still is. Increasingly, it will also be based on influence, followers and fans. If we own something we try to protect it. In fact, we can become over protective. For years we have been conditioned to think that we own stuff at work; our team, our customers, our products. Tesco thinks it owns it’s suppliers!

This over exuberance can be detrimental, if not a tad delusional. We can spend lots of money defending something that we actually don’t own. The future, we know, will be based on the value of our relationships with our fellow humans. You can only part own a relationship. You will only part own a product as we collaborate more, you have never owned your people, especially in a war for talent. And customers just ain’t buying that ‘priviledge’ thing anymore.

You don’t own the buildings you work in, you probably don’t own that car you drive and your company probably only lease that computer and mobile you use. We need to shift our mentality from one of ownership to partnership. That way we can work positively on the things that really are meaningful and rationally focus our efforts.

It’s an interesting question. If social media is to, actually it has, taken over and because of the demands of the new marketing approach that’s emerging, why do we need a marketing department at all? In his blog post http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/becoming-p2p-principal-characteristics-of-the-new-social-business/ Olivier Blanchard sets out that a P2P business (people to people) doesn’t even need a Social Media Director citing that social media is completely embedded in the organisation. He has a point!

Social media removes the need for one department to be responsible for marketing. Indeed, perhaps if a company does have a marketing department, they are completely subverting what social media can do. Marketing, in the future, will be about valuable conversations, enlightening collaborations and strong connections, all wrapped snuggly in a ‘word of mouth’ blanket!

In fact here’s a suggestion, if we are moving from B2C/B2B to P2P, perhaps we need to merge human resource and marketing departments. They have a lot in common in the suggested P2P environment. Retention of staff/customers, loyal customers/staff, great conversations, cultural shifts in expectations and bevhaviour, the way we treat people, the relationships we have, brand equity and so on and so on.

It makes sense, there is so much synergy between the two disciplines now that it would be a shame to miss an opportunity to add value to the P2P relationships we have both internally and externally. By the way, Olivier’s post is well worth the read!

In the past we have segmented the market based on product rather than the solution, then measured market share by that product. This also involved the benchmark of that products features against its competitors. Companies then started adding on by offering more features rather than adding value. In this situation you are solving the wrong problem.

Segmenting by customers doesn’t tend to work either. In an increasing sophisticated environment, slicing up by gender, age and location or by business size has become as useful as the world having one telephone. Customers increasingly don’t conform to the average customer in the segments you have had in the past.

New ways of marketing and the onslaught of social media throws a new perspective into the mix. We have become too good at creating products that don’t help customers do a job. Companies need to go back to the drawing board and look at what their customers are experiencing and what problems they need solving.

If you want to to build a brand that means something to customers, you need to create products and services that mean something to customers. Markets are no longer driven by typical customer segments but by small groups of people with niche common interests and connections. Traditional demographics such as gender, age and geographic location have taken a step back and we need to be segmenting on the ‘experience’ customers want.

Lets talk about something different, similarity! Groove Armada said it in their song ‘if everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other.’ Look around you, we do look the same. Coffee shops on the high street, marketing agencies, bottled water, training companies, banks, solicitors. Just go and compare these two sites; www.hellyhansen.com and www.musto.com and you’ll get a flavour of what I mean.

When your competitive advantages are the same, you have got to approach how you engage with your market place better, which is why I keep banging on about customer experience. Here’s a suggestion. Set up a new project team that meets on a regular basis. Make it cross functional and call it the ‘Disruptive Team.’ Their job, to disrupt the status quo, to discover what TRULY makes you different and to guide you swiftly away from similarity.

Undertaking something like this won’t destroy your brand, indeed, it might just be it’s saviour.

People will often say that your brand is like Marmite, they either love it or hate it. Your retort should always be, as long as people don’t find us indifferent. These ARE times for ’sticking your head above the parapet’ and ’sticking out like a sore thumb’ as long as it’s for something exceptional of course.

Being in an indifferent position is fundamentally a difficult place to be. Customers don’t see you and therefore ignore you. It becomes inherently difficult to build any traction on the customer loyalty front. Many companies initiate the worst action with poor consequences by trying to buy customers through traditional marketing tactics. That only gets you bad profits which you can’t sustain over the long term.

Better have a smaller list of customers who love what you do, promote what you do and buy more of what you do again and again. Rather than the ‘yeah whatever’ group that aren’t listening. Those that hate you…..well that’s just life!!!

I presented a seminar this week in Cornwall for www.mervynsmallwood.co.uk on customer loyalty and social media. It struck me that, like yesterday’s post, some new things are going to be challenging for business but we don’t need to panic about social media. Not just yet anyway. There is time to sit down, relax and just watch/observe.

My top five tips of what you need to be doing if you are looking at your marketing strategy in the next few months. Social media will be at the forefront of that so:

1. Read this book www.ducttapemarketing.com/socialmediaforbusiness.pdf

2. Research and play with social media, it’s meant to be fun.

3. Get yourself booked onto www.alikeminds.org in February 2010.

4. Find a social media ‘guru’ and pick their brains.

5. Read this blog and others www.thebrandbuilder.blogspot.com/

Don’t panic, social media is here to stay. You don’t need to jump on the bandwagon just yet. It’s more important to make sure you know what you’re doing and want to achieve. Spend 3 months getting your head round it. Play with www.twitter.com Start to engage with people. Follow people you like, follow people you hate. Understand the language, how it’s changing the way we do business, then launch yourself into it.

Social media is not a spectator sport so be prepared for that. You are not going to lose out by waiting a few months. In fact, you are going to be in a better position to manage the process and ensure your business makes the right decisions rather than hundreds of decisions.

I don’t think we are under any illusions here. Moving from a pre dominant offline marketing strategy to an online one is going to be tough. Not least because we have to go back to the drawing board and start again, forgetting almost everything we have been taught about marketing.

That’s not a bad idea though is it? Structurally things are shifting and essentially we have to move from a transactional relationship with our customers to one of engagement. In 2007, Forrester offered the definition of ‘engagement’ which included four elements; involvement, interaction, initimacy and influence. Now there’s a start. For me ‘influence’ is probably the most significant and exciting. Scott Gould has posted a fab article that’s a must read on influencers and translators. Catch it here at http://scottgould.me/influencers-and-translators/

There are three challenges here. Design a strategy that incorporates the four elements and embeds them in the culture of the organisation. Secondly, that those elements are implemented at every stage of the customer process and, thirdly, that you measure them to ensure it translates into meaning for you and your customers.

Tom Peters, is a bit of a hero of mine. I’ve read his stuff ever since an ex boss got me a copy of “In Search of Excellence” for my 21st birthday….boy was that a long time ago!!

Tom’s still got it! Read his blog here www.tompeters.com Recently, for old times sake, I read a couple of his old books. In reality, it was to go over old ground to see how much we had listened and possibly progressed. My word was he making sense. Stuff we still haven’t got our heads around but, maybe now, with the advent of social media, we can see the first rays of light. Some of Tom’s nuggets:

- “Humanise the relationship with our customers.”
- “People can smell emotional commitment from a mile away.”
- “Competitive businesses must lead their customers.”
- “Hire curious people – the gumption to do something exciting, something extraordinary, something that breaks the mould.”
- “Bringing clients into the process early makes them co-conspiritors in the creation adventure, which often edges them towards embracing exciting (and risky) ventures that promise a wow-scale payoff.”

If you are reading some leading edge books and are starting to play with social media, these phrases will sound all too familiar. Times are changing and for good. Whole sweeps of business models are broken. Lots of what we learnt at college, university or, that course we went on last week are outdated and outmoded.

The walls are breaking down; in many cases the opposite of what we have been taught is now the way of doing business. Shifting sands yes, troubled times yes, exciting times yes and, opportunist times, you bet!

Some time ago John McMahon from www.forum21.co.uk professed that there were nine competitive advantages ranging from production cost to marketing to R & D. I still think he is right but those nine can be honed down into two differentiating factors; the price you charge and doing something definably different/innovative.

Realistically, if you’re in the price sensitive market, price in some ways is all you’ve got and we know where that leads. More price reductions, more price promotions, more sales deals, less margins. People want quality but have low expectations of customer service. Let’s be honest, if I go into Primark, I’m not that bothered about having a meaningful, long term relationship with the people in there. I want my t-shirt for £1 and then I want to leave.

If you’re delivering something different and innovative, now that’s a different ball game all together. Expectations from the start are critically higher. We demand undivided attention if we are buying a premium product. We desire a mutually respectful relationship that’s full of trust. Our motivations to purchase are just as much about the product as the service and its emotional too. The focus has got to be the unrelenting exceptional customer experience.

Or, you can just be in that very vulnerable, very competitive place, the middle like Next, River Island, Debenhams and Marks and Spencer where you have to look good, be good and deliver a good price too. In fact, you have to hit both competitive advantages simultaneously, continuously, everyday! Now that’s difficult.