Twenty-Nine: Celebrating Your Cats' Meows
At the end, the authors return to the notion that the present market is significantly different to what it had been just a few decades ago, and marketers must change their practices accordingly.
Increased competition means we cannot count on the customers to demand virtually anything a firm might be capable of producing. Instead, we must understand the needs and desires of customers and serve them better than the competition.
Increased communication means that marketing must be done in the open, so we must deliver on our promises and cannot count on ignorance or secrecy to hide our misdeeds. Ti also means that customers have the expectation that they will be heard - not merely in aggregate, but as individuals.
The changes we are seeing in present marketing practices are the beginning of a shift to a customer-centered approach. The authors urge the reader to give what they have said serious consideration: this is not a situation in which doing nothing is the safest choice.
How to Apply Persuasion Architecture to an Already Great Campaign
There's an extended anecdote from a company that was experiencing some success in the market with their existing marketing tactics, but applying the authors' processes was able to discover that they were wasting a lot of money.
- They targeted business travelers and assumed them to be male (just as many women travel for business)
- They assumed their product was used as a substitute for business travel, but found it was more often used for personal reasons while executives were on the road
- They used television advertising to promote the product, which is the wrong channel for reaching executives
- Their Web site replayed the commercials and lacked an obvious call to action - a link to "more information" was provided in a hard-to-find location
When the author's systematic approach was applied, these obvious oversights were readily discovered.
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(EN: The ending of the book is a wreck as the author attempts to loop back to the original metaphors of marketing as bell-ringing and customers as cats, but nothing new is added here.)