Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Social as the Catalyst for Sustainable Marketing

I would like to use this marquee post of this blog to describe the concept behind the blog title.

As demonstrated with our use of the soil, the ocean, and other natural resources, mankind’s exploitation of a resource takes the form of mining where a resource is harvested at a rate and to a level where economic pressures cause the mines to fail. One of the planks of the green platform is to move into a sustainable model of using natural resources where a resource is harvested at a rate by which the environment naturally replenishes the use so there is always an economically viable level.

The same concept can be applied to marketing to your customers. Do not treat your CRM database as resource to be mined. Rather, treat your customers with respect over the life of their interaction with your brand so when time comes to replace a product they come back to your brand. Customer Life Cycle management should not refer to the buying cycle, but rather to the life of the customer's interaction with your product.

The role of social media in this paradigm is to be the catalyst to...
  • Transition a customer after the purchase into a sustainable recognition of the value of the product and to
  • Transition a customer towards the end of life of the product into interest in buying again from the brand.
The result of acquisition strategies would then be to build the overall customer base rather than to replenish losses caused by non-socially-respectful engagement tactics.

There are additional uses of social media, but one should not be as an additional channel to mine the CRM database. It is time to look at the CRM database as a sustainable resource from which to realize long term ROI rather than a resource to exploit to the level of exhaustion.