Richard van Hooijdonk

Stay up-to-date, stay sharp

Marketing is changing. Worldwide there are companies, marketers, researchers, marketing agencies and creative minds at work to realise these changes. Every day new brilliant ideas appear, remarkable campaigns appear, cases are thought through carefully, new techniques and opinions emerge. Ten years ago it was difficult to get a hold of this information, but today bloggers, twitters, online video and marketing agents are constantly providing us with an overload of information. Every day, I get up at 6.30am to scan the information, to organize it and process it in my presentations, plans and speeches. It's my job as inspirator and strategist. I develop my own personal vision and share it with the world, I use the vision of others to improve myself. That's how marketing 2.0 works. So to stay up-to-date yourself, to stay sharp with current developments, sign up on http://reader.google.com. Through the RSS reader, you can follow all your favorite weblogs, read articles, share, archive and pass on. You can bookmark your favorite websites at http://www.delicious.com: millions of internet surfers mark their favorite websites daily, tagging them with key words like 'marketing', 'virals' and thousands of other tags. It's an easy way to create an impressive collection of links to articles and research while also profiting from the knowledge and 'bookmarks' from hundreds of thousands of other users. Share your findings with your team every week. Discuss the most interesting developments that are relevant to your company: stay up-to-date, stay sharp.

Don't stop innovating!

Society is changing, consumers and businesses are changing. This means the commercial strategy must constantly evolve as well: standing still means falling behind. The basic principle of marketing is fulfilling the needs of our target audiences in order to reach optimal commercial results. When those needs change, the company needs to change as well to increase marketing strength and uniqueness. Facilitating this constant change requires investing in innovation. Innovation has to become a key element to the organisational processes.

We pay our bills, lease our cars, hire new staff and invest in new computer equipment. Oddly enough, innovation often falls by the wayside. It's something we'll add if, after paying all the other bills, we still have some time, money and tools left over. But if we want to take commercial progress seriously, we must give innovation a place of its own in our business, and invest a certain percentage of our returns or profits into commercial development. Of course, when doing so we'll use succesful business cases. In times of economic recession, innovation offers the opportunity to become cheaper, smarter, better. It's of utmost importance to keep an anticyclical mind and to use bad times to invest in profitable innovation.

Optimize your channels

During the purchasing process, consumers seldomly limit themselves to using just one channel. They get their information online or from stores, they search comparison sites and check out your competition before deciding where to buy. The product is then delivered by mail, clients receive further instructions through e-mail or telephone. Accessories are bought online or at the store, people browse through mail order catalogues and then browse online to find more information. Orders come in through coupon, online forms, telephone; returning items is done by mail; complaints are expressed by phone. Even the average carpenter faces channel innovation. Returning customers place orders by phone or online. Interested prospects check out the website after viewing an online campaign, which included a zip code application to help them find the nearest store location. Any complaints are returned to the carpenter by phone, personally handled by the service department.

These examples show how many different channels can be used during a purchasing process. Your company attracts clients, informs and advises, places transactions, offers support and generally builds upon the relationship with the client. Consumers don't limit themselves to specific channels, so why should you?

To prevent disappointing your clients, it's important to ensure your channel output complies with customer expectations. Walk through your channels and find out which needs and desires are the most important per channel. Analyzing and optimising your channels and purchasing process phases can lead to significant cost reductions and improvements on return.