Canadian Marketing Blog

Not right for this audience.

Last evening I attended the CMA’s Live Case Study - Marketing To The Luxury Customer. Great event, great presentation, great venue, great people, great conversations, etc. Although the event was great and I gleaned some interesting insights from it, that’s NOT what I want to talk about.

At the end of the presentation the floor opened for questions. Many questions focused on CRM, customer experience, etc. I was curious about what Holt’s was doing or thinking about doing with Social Media, so I asked. Now the response was something like “not much”, and that’s fine I understand that. Here’s the kicker, the next person to ask question that gets up says, “I would argue that blogging is not right for this audience” … then this person went on to ask a question. Not right for this audience? What??

Now I had a very good reason to ask the question. No to mention I was asking about Social Media not just blogging. Anyway, remember the insights I gleaned from the presentation … here they are …

- Holt’s is very interested in customer influencers
- Holt’s is listening to their customers and slowly shifting its strategy, tactics and customer experience based on these insights

Ok, so I like to think of myself as a logical person, so I did a little digging. After a total of 5-10 min of searching and reading (less time then it took me to write this blog entry), here’s what I found…

First I did a very quick blog search on Holt Renfrew: 2,253 posts on Technorati, 2,814 posts on Google Blog Search and 2,809 on Blog search. [Full disclosure: there is over lap in the results]. At first glace, those numbers might appear small. But this is only part of the picture. Think about it, if only 10 different people read each of the 2,253 posts on Technorati that would be 22,530 people who have now been influenced by your brand, like it or not.

Now we get really interesting, remember I learned all this in 5 min…

I read about Laura and she flies from Winnipeg to Toronto about once a month with her daughters to shop, yes shop! Not to conduct business, just to shop. And guess where, yep, Holt’s, along with other high end retail stores. After a little more digging, Laura has a little following on her Blog of about 3,000 people. Now I’m just speculating here, but I figure if Laura is coming to Toronto once a month to shop, Laura’s got some extra cash to spend. But most important is that she influences about 3,000 people. So, is Laura the right audience?

Want more … I found posts from various movie stars talking about you guessed it, Holt’s. Are stars the right audience? I read about a customer who tried to return an item after the 28 day return policy and had a great reason why, she was pregnant. Long story short, she final got the refund but was so unhappy with the experience. So she took the refund and went across the street and purchased from a competitor. I also picked up a few insider tips that where posted by employees. Great stuff that I passed to my wife, and guess what, she wrote about it in her blog. Which has about 1,000 people read it.

Should Holt’s run out and invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in social media, no. Should they add it to the list and prioritize it accordingly, yes. The problem I see is that statement … “I would argue that blogging is not right for this audience”. Three people came up to me afterwards and said they disagreed with that statement. I asked each of them what industry are they in … financial services, high-end retail and publishing. All said they are starting to listen to these conversations. I love that, we are starting to listen to these conversation.

Social Media is not about eCommerce, or the web or even blogging in general, it’s way deeper. Its real people having real conversations that are influencing purchase decisions. Marketers have to start listening and stop making statements like it’s not the right audience. These people are not the young or tech head’s of the past, these are your customers here today!

I’m I wrong here? Are the marketers of today really just thinking like marketers of yesterday? Please someone agree or disagree, but let’s start talking about this and not just dismissing it.

Wow! I didn't mean to start a blog war! My comment was misquoted. I said "I wonder if the Holt's target is really into blogging?" Then I asked who the Holt's target is, particularly the 20% who fund 80% of their revenue. It skews older ... wealthy boomers. Are wealthy boomers blogging? I wasn't suggesting that Holt's should not invest in social media. But I was questioning wealthy boomers as bloggers. That's all. I am definitely not someone who thinks like a marketer of yesterday. Thanks.

I agree 100% with the theme of this post. It's the difference between Push Marketing and Pull Marketing. I'm oversimplifying but largely Push Marketing is a pre-Internet approach. You spend lots of money to get your message in front of people, who don't really want to see it. So you're only getting through to a small percentage of your intended target niche. With Pull Marketing, you're trying to be visible enough and interesting enough that enough members of your target niche find you. Since they were looking for you, they're much more likely to convert into purchasers. So again you only find a percentage of your target niche. But I'm convinced that in most markets the ROI on Pull Marketing will far exceed that for Push Marketing. Blogging is perhaps the best channel there is for Pull Marketing. I would wager it's very effective among the upwardly mobile, such as a good slice of the Holt's clientele.

My apologies if I missquoted you. Thanks.