Marketing Paradigm

A marketing paradigm defines the way marketing is being done by means of a set of procedures and attitudes.

The traditional marketing paradigm

 Although marketing may have the same age as civilization itself, when talking about modern marketing as an applied art, the 1960s and 70s must be considered the beginning, in consumer markets where relatively low-valued products were sold to mass markets using mass media. Determining first the customers’ needs, and producing after that a product or service able to satisfy these needs were the most important aspects of the marketing theory based on the fact that the firm's strategic decisions were driven by customer expectations. Along the years this fundament has suffered many changes and even different names, among which there are: marketing orientation, customer driven, the marketing philosophy, customer intimacy, customer focus, and market driven.

The evolution of marketing seen as a discipline also suffered many changes such as: shifts from mass marketing to segmented marketing to mass customization; actions of including industrial markets (based on the concepts of "long-term marketing relationships", "micro segmentation", and "buying centers"), electronic markets (based on the concept of "personalized marketing"), and channel management (based on the concepts of "supply chain marketing programs" and "distributor marketing programs").

New marketing paradigms

A new perspective on marketing was felt as necessary since 1980s, when a group of theorists considered this gradual evolution as no longer pertinent, considering marketing as an established discipline ripe for a paradigm shift. Their perspective is often related to relationship marketing, customer experience management, or network marketing. For relationship marketers a complete revamping of the discipline is necessary, due to the shift from single transaction marketing to long-term relationship marketing. Their option is denied by the customer experience marketers who disagree with relationship marketers' dependence on customer relationship management software, which caused them to lose focus of the individual customer's experience of the service encounter. Network marketers bring a new view pointing out the interconnectedness of market actors and transactions, being seen as the application of systems thinking to marketing.

Any of these views bring great contribution to marketing, even if a gradual evolution, or a radical paradigm shift may be related more to factors associated with the individual's psyche than to any objective or empirical system of change categorization.

A special kind of marketing practice, incorporating public involvement in the development of an advertising/marketing campaign, is known under the name of "communal marketing", having as a result a "communal advertising". A campaign using such type of advertising uses consumers' ideas of what the brand means to them expressed through their own personal stories, with the use of print media, film or audio, composing a "consumer generated content" which will be incorporated into the campaign. After that, through a cross-media campaign, the extended community id invited to share in the results, creating a communal bond between the "brand champions as advertisers" and other individuals who are connected with what the brand has to offer. This leads to extending the relationship between the brand and the customers and also to creating a deeper connection between the brand and their core market.

Although different from viral marketing or word of mouth advertising, a high level of publicity within high relevance communities is still achieved, a necessary act since the success of the brand depends very much on these communities which normally follow the 80/20 rule, where 20% of the brand's customers account for 80% of its sales.

Considering the consumers as co-collaborators and co-creative is an important aspect of communal marketing. In the end the construct naturally lends itself to other "communal" marketing activities (such as "communal branding" and "communal research"), the trend being incorporated into consumer-based, "virtual" advertising agencies using consumer-generated content exclusively.

A "communal branding" effort is developed each time the consumers become co-collaborators in an advertising campaign, "communal research" engaging the brand’s audience which help making marketing decisions during the development of a campaign. Such an example is Peter Jackson, who reached out to readers of the book in order to help him weigh in on some major directorial decisions when making „The Lord of the Rings”.

Even if the actual practice of communal marketing has been used for several years already, through communal forms of information sharing (such as weblogs, online message boards, podcasts, interactive broadband TV, and other new media adopted by consumers for establishing community forums for discussing their customer experiences), the term "communal marketing" was coined more recently by Joseph Jaffe in his  book "Life After the 30-Second Spot", by this managing to codify the practice for marketing practitioners.

Dialogue Is the New Marketing Paradigm

Whether they like it or not, every small business has a digital footprint: who they are, what they do, where they are located, and how customers feel about their products and services. Dialogue is in the air: Google’s newly announced focus on real-time search (read: search of dialogue), and the rumors of a possible acquisition of Yelp (one of the key consumer-focused local dialogue repositories) both bear witness to the increasing prominence of consumer chatter on the web.

As we wrote recently (“Local Search: A Solved Consumer Problem”), Marchex has turned search and data mining technology on its head to help SMBs understand and leverage their digital footprints. And activity in the beta program of our reputation management service has revealed some pretty critical insights. Here are three notable observations about the ways small and medium size businesses are interacting with customers online.

Engagement.. In focus groups, we saw SMBs filter, slice, dice, and dig into how customers describe them. On average, beta users are spending upwards of 9 minutes per session, with initial visits much higher. Given the ability to filter by affect, dig into statistically relevant phrases, and understand discrepancies in listing data, SMBs are actively engaging with their footprint, most for the first time ever.

Competitive insight. The most frequently used feature is the ability to compare key phrases and aggregated opinions with a specific competitor. In their day-to-day operations, almost all of the SMBs we spoke to have specific competitors against whom they benchmark their business, and this is reflected in their use of the product to actively compare how they stack up in the minds of customers.

Operational Decision Making. In surveying beta users, we learned that one of the most useful features of reputation management was helping SMBs make better decisions about how they operate their business: Is the new chef well received? Is customer service up to par? Do customers like the selection of brands we carry? Etc.

Most of all, what we’re realizing as we watch and learn from SMBs is the increased need for delivering products that engage and deliver real, actionable insight into how those SMBs are perceived in the minds of customers. As we all know, to market and operate effectively, the ability to understand your customers is a must-have information advantage, and technology should—and can—help us.

Delivering clicks, calls, and profile pages, as we’ve learned from our own business, is a necessary, but by itself insufficient way to serve the full marketing needs of the SMB. After all, if customers don’t like the new chef, are made uncomfortable by the supercilious store manager, or find that projects aren’t delivered on time and budget, what’s the point of driving more leads?

To keep its leadership position in search, Google will need to increasingly invest in real-time search of consumer dialogue on the web. And to serve the SMB as broadly as we must, our industry will need to invest in products that transform customer chatter to actionable marketing and operational intelligence – what we’re calling an information advantage for the SMB. Otherwise, it’s all just clicks, listings, opinion and noise