Partnering with Media that has an Impact on Buying

There is a lot of hype around social media and virtual networking sites, and marketers are diving in and keeping an eye on the emergence of these spaces, yet an interesting study from eMarketer illustrates that advertising in such media channels might be a waste of time if you are looking to influence Internet users to buy:

And the most influential media is

TV leads the way along with Magazines and Newspapers. With the 'print' side of it struggling, perhaps their is a better opportunity to partner efforts with leading publishers as opposed to paying for advertising. Leveraging a special offer for their customers and cross promoting their offering in return, could prove to be a valuable model given that advertising spend is harder to come by in this down-turn economy. Whatever the case, we need to get more creative and we need to leave the experimentation aside and focus our efforts on what produces results.

Sharing Customer Communications

I'm often asked about how to communicate with end-customers once a Marketing Partnership is formed and how to deal with certain matters. Naturally, it depends on what the matter is and how the parties have agreed to divide the 'customer communication' responsibilities, yet what I often recommend is that the party that is best capable to deal with it based on resources, knowledge and expertise is the one that should take on that responsibility.

I'll reflect on a scenario that came up recently with one of our leading clients. The partner-brand that we had 'partnered' them with had a query from one of their end-customers regarding my clients' offering. It was a complicated matter so the partner-brand brought it to our attention. Upon hearing about it, my client did one better than provide 'wording' to the partner-brand for a response to the end-customer and their query - my client advised the partner-brand that they can have the end-customer contact them directly and gave email and phone number information for a qualified individual who could respond to their questions and concerns.

When you partner with another brand, you need to know about their business and what they are doing, but when it comes to specific details that surround questions about their industry where they are the 'experts' - let the 'experts' handle it. A good practice in advance of forming the Partnership is to run through potential 'customer service related scenarios' that could arise once the partner program is fully executed and to assign responsibility and develop a flow-chart for how the parties should effectively deal with each type of example. This will ensure that there is no confusion once all is in motion.

How Starbucks brought me back to Sears

I have not been in a Sears department store in years. No particular reason - they just don't attract me as a retailer and like many have indicated - they don't have anything that I can't pick up anywhere else, especially at Wal-Mart.

Earlier this week, I made it back to Sears after many years of absenteeism, yet it was not Sears that got me there. It was Starbucks. A friend of mine wanted to meet up for coffee and suggested that we meet-up at the Starbucks in the bottom level of the downtown Sears store.

To sum it up - Sears lost me along the way, but managed to get me back (if only for a moment) because they have partnered with a category leader like Starbucks. By the way - the Starbucks was packed and had much more concentrated traffic than Sears did - hopefully Sears is benefiting from this relationship beyond charging them monthly rent. While making my way around the store - I did see some interesting sales. I may head back this weekend and check em' out.

In a downturn economy - consumers will likely choose simple 'comfort' purchases like coffee or a burger over anything that stretches their wallet. It's important that everyone review their offering and see where they can adjust their product mix to ensure that they are still giving people what they want and if you can't do it on your own, then you can partner with someone else who is really good at what you want to offer.