It's all about the customer experience!

In the age of the internet, instant communication, and social media, creating a great product is not enough anymore. Consumers have choice; they can support their local small business, a national or multinational retail chain, or shop online. A great product is a good start, but it might not get you very far. 

I think the shift from the 4 P's to the 4 C's is a great way to encouraged companies to consider the consumer throughout the product development process.  This consumer-centric focus should run from product conception to post-purchase experience, as the consumer's needs and wants are king! As a consumer, you can guy a great product and have a great retail experience, but if you cannot get your item fixed under warranty are you likely to purchase from that company again? Probably not. Are you likely to post on Facebook, tweet, and tell your friends about it? Probably!

The internet and social media are both a blessing and a curse to companies and the marketing industry. Approaching your product or service with a consumer-centric mindset should lead to success in this competitive world!

What do you think? Is consumer-centric really the way to go? Should companies be expected to forgo profits to provide better customer care? 

You Tube moves from "views" to "engagement"

I was interested to read that YouTube is changing the focus of how it wants its users to engage with the site. The article, referenced by MarketingMag.ca, explains that YouTube has changed it's 'related videos recommendation' from number of clicks/views to time spent viewing videos or channels. The idea is that users will spend more time viewing videos and be more engaged with the site, rather than clicking quickly through quirky videos of cats playing the piano or a baby biting his brother's finger!

I posted this article to Digg, as I was interested to see how the community would view this change in the YouTube user experience. This change took effect on March 15, 2012, and so far the number of views is down slightly, but the length of time spent viewing videos is up slightly.

From MarketingMag.ca

There was an interesting Forbes article released yesterday, where contributor Adam Theirer talked about the relationships between advertisers and consumers. He acknowledges that consumers hate advertising and do everything to try and avoid it; using PVR's to record shows and fast forwarding through commercials, and downloading AdBlock software for internet browsers. However, he points out that without advertising revenue, we'd all be paying for online content, we'd pay more for TV subscriptions, and so on. For companies who choose to advertise on YouTube, having users more engaged with the videos they're watching means they are likely to also be more engaged with the advertisements. It will be interesting to monitor whether this is actually the case, and if metrics, such as click throughs, increase due to this change in user experience.

What do you think? Do you think advertising click-throughs rates will increase with this new model? 

Back to Basics ~ Wind Mobile

If there's an industry in Canada that suffers from lack of transparency, it's the cell phone industry! Fees for everything, extra costs, high charges, etc... we all love to hate our cell phone providers! Wind Mobile is trying to change that.

Wind's customer engagement strategy stands out to me as innovative, yet so simple; Wind listened to their potential customers! They set up an online forum where they encouraged consumers to vent their feelings about what is wrong with the cell phone industry. Wind then built their cell plans and overall service around the weaknesses of their competitors. This approach built a great foundation of consumers, who feel that they helped build the Wind Mobile brand, and therefore built brand loyalty before they even provided cell services! So simple, yet so effective!

Market Share of Canadian mobile network operators in Q3 of 2011 (CWTA), Sourced from Wikipedia

The main challenges facing Wind are coverage and cell phone compatibility; the popular iPhone cannot be used on Wind's network. Although there are many challenges ahead, I feel that Wind has positioned itself well in the Canadian cell phone market, has connected with its target market through advertising and the use of internet forums, and will continue to build a strong nationwide brand.