Lessons from marketing politics and ideas in Curacao

All politics is for local consumption, so too this post dealing with local politics. If you are somehow related to Curacao, you know that on May 15th we had a referendum, of which the result was 52/48.

Throughout the campaigns I was burning to post my observations, but since marketing is not an exact science, I did not want to publicly take the risk.

In the aftermath, what do I think we in Curacao have learnt about political marketing strategy?

The power of emotions

Not just any emotion, the relevant emotions (of the relevant target market); not just emotional content, but the inference, context and form of the emotion. As is the case in consumer products market, marketers who appeal to the right emotions in politics, also do best. Over the past 20 years, marketers, including those in Curacao, have relentlessly trained consumers to choose a product based on emotions (not reason). That's the only decision-making process that today's consumer really knows. He is no longer able to decide based on reason. Hot temperamented people like Caribbeans certainly cannot.

Know your market

Quantify the target segments, understand what motivates each segment and use these core motivators as the starting point for any strategy. Finding a "common motivator" is ideal. But if that does not exist, applying the motivator from one segment across all segments doesn't work, not even in small Caribbean markets.

Mirroring your competitors' position is not a viable strategy

If your competitor positions itself as "for the youngest people", will you position yourself as "for the oldest"? If she says "my product is the cheapest", will you say that yours is the most expensive? Intuitively that does not make sense. Why not, you wonder? Because everyone in the middle is left unserved, untargeted. Marketers know there is a larger market in the middle than at any extreme.

My most interesting observation is in the next post.

The difference between marketing and sales

Seth Godin as a great post on the difference between marketing and sales.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/the-difference-between-marketing-and-sales.html

Guestology

Guestology; Disney term

Not just knowing your guests in terms of demographics, psychographics, need, wants, experiences and expectations.

But understanding your guests: understanding their motivations and analyzing and interpreting objective data in such a way to yield profit enhancing marketing strategies.

The only way to do so is by engaging customers in conversations, through techniques such as focus groups and in-depth interviews.

Analyzing results of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Here are some interesting observations from Mark David Jones, President of Small World Alliances, and former Disney man:

Dissatisfied customer damage

You think 5% dissatisfied customers is acceptable? Think again. Consider that a dissatisfied customer broadcasts his dissatisfaction 20 to 30 times. And that word-of-mouth is the most powerful form of advertising.

To get the damage done by dissatisfied customers: Multiply your number of annual customers by the percentage of dissatisfied customers. Multiply that number by 20 or 30 for the number of negative advertising images you generate in a year. And remember that w-o-m weighs more than paid advertising.

Extremely satisfied customer earnings

On the other hand, a customer who is merely satisfied is not an advocate. For someone to be your advocate and generate positive word-of-mouth for you, s/he has to be "extremely satisfied". How many "extremely satisfied" customers do you have each year?

If your advertising budget is restrictive, as is often the case in a small market, you know where to invest your money for the most efficiency.

Mark David Jones gave a workshop in Curacao last Friday during CTO's 5th Tourism Human Resources Conference.

A Pitch for BusinessRICH boot camp

Just a pitch for an event organized by my friends Arnout Druyvesteyn and Janine Lie-A-Kwie.
They are developing their Coaching Business throughout the Caribbean. Perfect strategy if your domestic market is small... expand to other markets


BusinessRICH
A two day business boot camp for business owners and managers
who really want to improve their business

Visit their site http://www.actioncoach.com/arnoutdruyvesteyn/events.php

Guest speaker: ActionCOACH Lee Huffman (USA), serial entrepreneur, international speaker, author

June 11, 2009 (8:00 am - 9:00 pm) & June 12, 2009 (8:00 am - 5:00 pm)
Marriott Hotel, Piscadera Bay, Curacao

Once-only introduction fee ANG 995,-. FREE for our current clients.
Price includes lunches and dinner, workbook & materials.

Register before June 4, 2009 here or email arnoutdruyvesteyn@actioncoach.com

Latin American economies

Last week I attended the 39th General Assembly of ALIDE - Asociacion Latinoamericana de Instituciones Financieras para el Desarrollo - including the Caribbean. While Caribbean economies are well-known to me, it was a welcome refresher in Latin American economies.
The key take-aways for me were:

1. between 2000 and 2007 poverty in Latin America was reduced by 10%, meaning that 40 million people rose out of poverty.

2. if you want to know what the future areas of growth will be, examine what the main research areas in U.S. universities are. Now these are energy, and water

3. in Latin America also the growth in tourism can be exponential with targeted investments in tourism, as the case of North Eastern Brazil shows.

So, it leads me to think how small economies can use this knowledge to their advantage.

Online marketing - gaming

I spent a workday at the beach learning about the online gaming industry and the latest developments in online marketing in general. How much the industry has changed since I was first introduced to the concept many years ago. It has kept me wondering how to apply the learnings to other similar industries and markets.