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Scott Million ON 4.9.2010

Research and Analysis Lay the Groundwork for Successful Marketing

Marketing in the dark, without any understanding of your consumer base or your brand itself, can lead to all sorts of awkward marketing pratfalls and painful slip-ups. There are a range of research analysis options, however, that can help shed some light on the factors that you'll need to keep in mind in order for your marketing strategy to succeed.

First, you need some insight into your target consumers. You can gain this knowledge from the findings of a target market analysis. This kind of research will provide you with an in-depth understanding of just who these individuals are. It's more than demographic facts and figures; you also get an idea of their interests, the way they live their lives, and the things that they dislike. With this sense of your consumer base at your fingertips, it's a lot easier to determine the best form and location for your marketing efforts to ensure the best chance for their success.

Now that you know who your prospective customers are, it's a good idea to know who you're vying with to get their business. A competitor analysis can help you determine your primary competition in the online battlefield. It's important when you're marketing online to identify your online opposition because sometimes these brands won't be the same ones you're butting heads with in the brick and mortar world. The competitor analysis gives you the lowdown on the strengths and weaknesses of your online rivals to help you identify where your opportunities for marketing success lie as well as where any potential pitfalls might be lying in wait.

With your target identified and your competition assessed, it's time to determine the most effective way you can use your online brand to make sure your marketing goals are met. A campaign positioning analysis can help you reach this conclusion. By taking into account your brand, your desired marketing goals, and the messaging you use to make your point, this kind of analysis will enable you to have the information you need in order to guide the decisions you'll make that will shape your marketing campaign. If your campaign is in support of a new product or if you are trying to reposition your existing brand in a new niche, you need to perform a brand positioning analysis. This type of analysis will make sure you aren't trying to move into a space that consumers already consider the territory of another brand or product.

If rebranding is your goal, something that would complement a brand positioning analysis would be a brand audit, which takes a serious look at all of the collateral associated with your brand and help identify the potential impact of changing that brand. Whatever your marketing intentions, it's always best to be a brand with a plan. The key to having the right plan is performing some concise research and analysis before you make any decisions. That way, you know what you're doing and how to get where you want to go before you launch your marketing initiative.

Team LFI ON 4.1.2010

Antisocial People Rather Intensely Like Forcing Others Out. Lively Social Debate Altogether Yucky

(Note: This was our small contribution to the annual April Fool's Day shenanigans that take place online and offline.)

There's a new trend in social media behavior that's recently begun to catch on with many users. Rather than reaching out to old friends or attempting to cultivate new relationships, these individuals are instead doing things to make people de-friend or no longer follow them. Forget social media; for these users, antisocial media is king. Whole pages are now being created that are devoted to the sole purpose of allowing users to detail who they hate and why they hate them as a means to get these people to no longer include them in their social media circle of friends. An example of a typical posting on one of these pages describes the source of one user's ire as follows: "Cheese breath always takes most comfortable chair in meetings, never holds door when you know he sees you behind him, needs to clip nose hair. Seriously, does your mom dress you?"

Among the online destinations dedicated to feeding this latest user need is the recently launched antisocial site SnowShovel. As explained on the site, its name stands for the item its users would most like to use to hit people who irritate them.SnowShovel already has membership numbers approaching seven figures and expects that to double in size by the end of 2010. "

It's all part of the current political mood in the U.S.," says Dennis Moore, co-founder of the site. "People no longer tolerate anyone whose opinions differ from their own. They just don't respect them at all. So rather than relying on discussions and attempts to find common ground, they instead just go online and electronically smite their enemies".

Despite his use of the somewhat biblical hyperbole, Mr. Moore does feel that the antisocial trend has its upside.

"It's healthy for your personal well-being to vent," Moore contends.; "Freud said so. So did Jung. You could look it up.

The movement is not solely isolated to these "In-Your-Facebook" types of sites. Antisocial media users on Twitter pride themselves on driving off their followers. In fact, @TwitOfTheYear was started so that these users can compete against one other for the highest number of followers alienated.As of 9 PM last night, Briton Gervaise Brook-Hampster led the rankings, having lost 4,110 followers including, according to one recent tweet, his own grandmother and three of his four children.

Several brands have become aware of the antisocial media movement and have begun devising ways to capitalize on it. Some have started reaching out to users who have actively campaigned to be de-friended by their competitors with the intent of recruiting these users as both customers and a new form of social media marketing asset. Only time will tell if antisocial media will reach the level of popularity enjoyed by its less hostile predecessor but one thing is certain. The antisocial trend will need to find a way to be monetized or it may prove in the end to be nothing more than another online joke.

Note: This was our small contribution to the annual April Fool's Day shenanigans that take place online and offline. For a discussion of the perils of actually behaving antisocially online, check out this post.)

[Contributed by Emily Van Winkle]