This classic 2005 article on the Creating Passionate Users blog contains some great thoughts about how marketing has changed and how “education has become the killer app in a newer, more ethical approach to marketing.” It also contains a lot of good links, trackbacks, and comments to good educational marketing resources to explore. Worth a careful read.
Of course, despite the forward-thinking wisdom in this article and many of the others linked to it, traditional marketing (Out-spend instead of Out-teach) still has a very strong toehold. And even though it won’t make people “passionate” about your brand, outspending still works. My experience in marketing states that the “consumer education” message hasn’t been quite compelling enough to break that toehold.
Instead, the disruption necessary to really change marketers’ minds, and open them up to the importance of consumer learning and research, is coming with the advent of Social Networking and User-Generated Content. The content users weren’t getting from brands, they now seek from each other. Marketers who have been sitting on the sidelines watching this happen are suddenly getting this nagging feeling that if they don’t understand this new social world and figure out how to be a part of it . . . well, they might have to find something else to do for a living. When you say “social,” marketers are ready to listen.
At its root, Social Commerce is about education: brands teaching consumers and consumers teaching each other. Learning is key to the buying process, and even more broadly it is key to making consumers care (or become passionate) about your brand.
Filed under: Consumer Purchase Process, Social Commerce, Web 2.0 | Tagged: Creating Passionate Users, Social Commerce
