The Return of Goodwill

A couple of months back someone mentioned to me that lawyers, dentists, doctors, etc were all having tough times selling their practices/clients as they moved into retirement. This is because the economy was so good that a brand new Doogie Howser could form his own office and have clients banging on the door as soon as he flipped that little sign to "Open".

Purchasing someone's business, it's clients and throwing in some goodwill for those that had worked tirelessly to form that business seemed to be a fading idea.

What about now though? Wouldn't a start up rather have an established client base than having to form their own by pumping money into advertising and promoting. I think that with the current economic state goodwill shall be brought back into the game. Maybe as a result some of those that were hit in the pocket book by the crashing stock market will be able to retire sooner than later.

Attention Economy

Earlier this week I attended Marketing Magazine's Marketing Week conference at the Westin Harbour Castle Toronto. First a random thought from the conference, the food at the Westin was bar none the best I have ever had at a large conference/dinner/luncheon.

Now on to the important stuff.

I attended a very interesting and important panel event called "The Attention Economy" which was based on the aspect of there are so many marketing messages that bombard consumers each day how do you ensure you get their attention with your message. Here are some of the interesting points that came from the panelists and will make you think:

• Consumers have attention deficit disorder. They are cynical and demanding of marketing messages that they see nowadays. They hold the power and when they want something they want it now and they want it fast. Which means as a business you have to have your product available to them 24/7, 365 days a year.


• Your marketing cannot be intrusive and annoying moving forward. It used to be you could buy a 30 second spot and mash it into peoples brains. You used to have to have 5 parts of a marketing mix, now you have to consider at least 20 different pieces in your marketing plan.


• An example of a non-intrusive ingenius idea was for the macy's day parade M&Ms used their billboard to have their m&ms watching the parade instead of having a blatant sign saying "Buy m & ms". This created a huge amount of buzz and got a tonne of media attention


• Here are some stats that were thrown out by a few of the panelists: 60% of consumers that have an "experience" with a brand convert into a sale. In a poll 92% of marketers polled found experiential marketing successful in branding a product and converting leads to sales


• Consumers are looking for more than just the features & benefits of a product, they want to know what the experience is that comes along with it.


• You need to constantly be trying new things, measuring them, and then assessing whether they are worth the investment. Is this idea working with our target? You need to find out where your target is and what works for them.

Some of these seem like pretty obvious points but its always something we as marketers should be looking back on and reminding ourselves. Its not just a simple game anymore. And one of the messages that came up throughout the event was "This is an exciting time to be a marketer, you have to be creative and your job isn't as easy anymore. But thats what makes it exciting."