Brand building - live life in the web lane
A new report from the Chartered Institute of Marketing indicates some of the best ways marketers can connect with their target audience.
Businesses must “inhabit the spaces their customers inhabit” to build brands and spark a relationship with consumers, according to the Head of Research at the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).
Mark Stuart, who is the author of a new CIM Agenda paper called What hasn’t happened yet: the shape of digital to come?, suggests most people only really view eight or nine websites rather than searching the whole world wide web on a regular basis.
“Practising marketers need to live online the way their customers’ do; that’s the best way to create offerings that customers will like and respond to, versus being intrusive of personal spaces and becoming an unwanted third party,” he explained.
The new CIM paper shows both good and bad examples of companies engaging with their customers via the internet, with Waitrose seen as a successful company and American Apparel apparently “getting it wrong on Second Life”.
Social media is also becoming an increasingly vital part of marketing strategy, with recent reports hinting that companies are increasing budgets for this area of their business.
The Value of Social Media Report, published last month by Econsultancy in association with Online Marketing Summit, found that 81 per cent of firms expect social media budgets to grow over the next year - although many organisations are failing to adequately measure the success of their endeavours.
Written by Chris Randal
