Business Insight Zone

Earlier this week, I got to meet Jackie Huba at the Austin Social Media Breakfast. Jackie co-writes the popular Church of the Customer blog, and she led a discussion of how some companies — for example Maker’s Mark — are using technology to build up a community around their brands.

After the meeting, I put forward an idea about social-media marketing to Jackie and some of my fellow attendees — an idea that’s been rattling around in my mind for a while. The short version is captured in the title of this post: Social media makes merchants of us all.

The long history of face-to-face business

In the old days, in bazaars and souks like the one pictured here, or in the local baker’s and fishmonger’s and dressmaker’s shops, you did all of your business face to face. You came to know the merchants in your community. You knew at first hand who offered the best products and the fairest prices.

This still happens in some face-to-face businesses today. If you start having lunch regularly at a well-run neighborhood cafe, the staff will soon get to know you. The owner may greet you by name when you walk in. They’ll remember what you mean when you say, “I’ll have the usual.”

The guy who owns the hardware store in my neighborhood remembers my name. He remembers that I work for Hoover’s. When I ask him for what product I should use to tackle a particular job, he doesn’t hesitate to show me what he has . . . but he also doesn’t hesitate to tell me if what I really need is something he doesn’t carry. He has even pointed me to his competitors, on those few occasions when he didn’t have what I needed.

In short, he’s a good, old-fashioned merchant.

Modern marketing rears its head

Modern big business, and epecially online business, unavoidably requires a level of abstraction. BMW can’t get to know all of its potential customers individually, which is why it goes to great lengths to convey its brand image through advertisements, cutting-edge design, and anything else it can. A friend of mine once bought a Mercedes and couldn’t stop talking — not only about the quality of the car, but also about the kid-glove service he got from the dealership. I’ve had the same experience with American Express.

To a substantial degree, all of the marketing efforts of BMW, Mercedes, and AmEx are math-driven. I’m sure the marketing departments of each company could tell you oodles about how their sales channels work, and what numbers they expect to see in terms of prospects, leads, and so on. Again, this is unavoidable in the modern world of mass marketing.

But there can be more . . .

Social media enters the scene

In its community-building aspects, social media can turn marketers (and other businesspeople) back to the old ways of the good merchant. Maybe you don’t get to know every customer personally, but you can meet a lot more of your best and most enthusiastic customers. There’s still a lot of the “science” of marketing — but with many more opportunities for the human touch, too.

In her talk, Jackie discussed how Fiskars has recruited “Fiskateers” to use and promote its scissors and other wares among avid scrapbookers. This enthusiast community bridges the online and offline worlds, and it has done great things both for the scrapbookers and for the bottom line of Fiskars. More and more companies figure this out every day — how to use the new panoply of social-media tools to bridge the electronic gap between themselves and their customers.

What is your company doing to act more like a good, old-fashioned merchant? What could it be doing?

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More reading:

• Jackie Huba: Do corporate-sponsored social networks work?
• Social media breaches barriers.
• Social media: the right tool for the job.

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(Photo by gatos.rojos.)

Category: Marketing & Sales, Social media