Detailed advice to help you

conquer the recession by using

Marketing 2.0

16 Marketing 2.0
rules to guide you
through the
Based on the recession!
Marketing 2.0
New Marketing Cycle

This edition is also available as a

powerseminar and workshop

Richard van Hooijdonk

richard@vanhooijdonk.com
16 Marketing 2.0 rules to guide you through the recession!
The economic recession is unavoidable. It's something we all have to get through, it's
something businesses have to deal with. A recession also offers opportunity: it's when
things get rough that people and marketers are forced to critically reflect on what
they're doing. Sales figures are under pressure, and with it so are marketing budgets.
Accountability now plays a more important role than ever while attention for existing
clients is top priority. I offer 16 rules you can use to face the economic recession. These
rules enable you to take a critical look at your current approach, cleaning up your
business accordingly. Following these rules strengthens your marketing, differentiating
you from those who don't act upon the current economic climate. The rules are based
on my 'The New Marketing Cycle' model, as well as years of experience with
optimization, innovation and start-up companies.

1. When setting your 2. You can't be everything

targets, be firm! for everyone: choose your
There are several reasons to formulate firm, target audiences!
thorough targets. Once you've set them, you can
'measure' your targets and analyze the results. Commercial success depends on how valuable
You can then use those results to adapt your you are to buyers. This means you have to focus
targets insightfully. Targets form an excellent base on groups who share the same needs or
to any good business case. If the recession faces demands.
you with budget cuts, there are two ways to get the
budget you want. First of all, you can exceed your
targets. Second, you can present a 'recession
business case'. In both cases, targets are crucial
to your success. Targets are measurable numbers
you can define at specific levels. Use the 'down
drill': turnover, profit, target, product, brand,
channel, crossmedia, web presence and goals
facilitating the connection to sales.

Focusing means being up-to-date on specific

Strong operational goals ensure you can keep
track of campaign results, target audience
turnover, web conversion, lead generation and
customer value. That means you have a much
bigger chance of getting the results you want!
More free inspiration?
www.richardvanhooijdonk.com
groups' customer insights. Afterall, customer
insights are the basis for your commercial
strategy. With these insights in mind, you develop
the product proposition, crossmedial campaign,
web presence and brand. Make sure you get
through to what your target audience is thinking,
understand their reasons for purchasing, their
reasons not to, their compliments and criticism.
This is what fuels a profitable, customer focused
approach. Target groups differ from eachother, so
you'll have to tweak and tune your approach for
specific groups. Customer insights can be gained
through many different ways: user generated
content, online discussion boards, talking to or
interviewing your clients, branch research,
account managers, callcenters or other forms of
customer interaction.
3. Let your customers
create your products (co-
creation)
Who are you to know what your clients need?
Aren't they the ones who know what they want,
and aren't you the one to use that information? A
lot has been said and written about co-creation,
where you use large groups of customers or
consumers to develop new products. The basics
are simple: you can take a certain starting point,
and let your clients work from there to come up
with something better.
Using a special 'interaction model', all those new
ideas are then classified and turned into specific
product scenarios. It's an excellent way to obtain
and use customer insights!
In following articles, we'll take a closer look at the
'stage-gate' development process, a process that
allows you to efficiently turn a market scan into a
new product launch. In recent years I've used this
method to launch many new products and
services, almost always with great results!
4. Think about a unique
product proposition!
t's not always easy to change or improve our core
product. And yet, we need a product proposition
that differentiates us, to get one up on the
competition. At my seminars, I often show
powerful examples from IKEA, whose 'Billy book
cases' sell in huge numbers. IKEA supports its
core product with the IKEA Club community, a
restaurant, playpens for kids, excellent delivery
and montage services and a keen stock policy.
The customer is happy and perceives IKEA as
offering very complete service packages at very
reasonable prices. They barely notice spending
lots of money on the family lunch, extra furniture
and its montage or the delivery services. That's
the key secret that has hundreds of thousands of
people enjoy their weekend visits to the Swedish
furniture giant, it's the key secret to IKEA's ever
increasing customer value. Having discussed the
example of IKEA, it's your turn to develop a unique
product proposition, developing it using four
different elements.
The first element is having a strong core product.
This product can be expanded with the second
element: modules or add-ons, allowing us to
enrichen the product and raise customer value.
The third element is to couple online services to
the core product. These online services support
and differentiate the core product proposition.
Fourth, there's the element of extra's: presents
and other incentives for your client to make that
final purchasing decision. When developing your
unique product proposition, you can use the
MarketingMonday Proposition Model. I'll cover this
model in one of our future publications.
5. 'Socialize' your brand,
'connect'!
I predict an end to mass media. For years, I've had
the honor of spending millions on television,
advertising, door-to-door newspapers, radio and
online campaigns. Since 2000 however, many
mass media results have begun to display cracks
in their armor. We're reading fewer newspapers
and magazines, we're watching less television. We
spend more time watching and reading what
others are doing and writing, we're deciding what
we do and don't want to see, and we've come to
trust what other people tell us about brands,
products and services. In fact, their opinions have
become so important to us, we often base our
purchasing decisions on what others say. It's the
rise of the social consumers' organisation, placing
the power in the hands of consumers. We now
have to create a dialogue with each individual
consumer: we have to put an effort into building a
relationship and
we have to
become an
honest,
transparent
partner. The
client has to
believe our
brand is
accessible, co-
operative and
listening. The
brand and client
have to become friends. Afterall, friends are
popular: friends are people you'd gladly introduce
to your neighbours, family and friends or
colleagues. And that's exactly where we want to
be.
The structure of 'social branding' submits there
must first be a connection between the brand/
product and the client. Then, it's up to us to
facilitate the relationship between the client and
his own network: we provide the tools that allow
him to socially share our product or service with
the people around him.
More free inspiration?
www.richardvanhooijdonk.com
Thirdly, we ensure that the network our clients
have created can also carry our own 'buzz', such 6. Ensure unique core
as through virals, communities or consumer
generated content.
values and prove them!
Fourth, we develop the right tools to allow news
and information to spread through the network.
Basically, what I describe here is the process of
old-fashioned word of mouth advertising. Only now
it's automated, optimally using the speed of new
media.

Popular tools here are viral concepts based on

video or games, but there are more interactive
ways to reach large crowds when we also use the
loyalty among customers, prospects and fans.
Research shows that conversion is a lot higher in
these cases, as the sender is now a trusted
familiar person. 'Social branding' and 'social
marketing' are growing phenomena with
impressive results. Kentucky Fried Chicken's first
viral, five years ago, reached 193 million viewers
and pushed turnover by 6%. Dutch political party
SP sent comical videos to 40.000 of its members;
a year later, close to the national elections, more
than one million people had seen the political
videos.
Brands have to be unique, generate trust, and
enjoy preference and appreciation from
customers. Those are four core values we've all
seen in marketing literature. These brands now
have to comply to several new demands, put forth
by the marketing economy. Brands now have to
also be honest and transparent. They have to be
co-operative and accessible. The problem is, many
companies already believe they're unique and
offer the best product and serivce. We're all
trustworthy, we're all 'your partner in...'. The core
values form the basics for our companies, but they
also form the input to our creative processes
before leading to product or brand
communication. Brands can be dynamic, exciting,
passionate, sensible, inspiring or naughty. After
establishing the core values, we have to prove
them. What is it that makes us dynamic, exciting
or sensible? What proof do we have of being
passionate or inspiring?

When brands prove their core values time and

The marketing organisation's DNA will have to be
tuned to these important new developments. If
over the next five to ten years mass media is
virtually replaced by consumers' personal 'content
channels', we'll need new techniques and new
methods to reach out and touch consumers. Right
now, 'social marketing' can already give us
excellent results, so long as you keep your clients
and fans happy.
again, this will have a strong effect on a
customer's brand appreciation. Highly appreciated
brands can ask more from consumers, because
these brands 'manage' the perceptions a client
has when making his purchasing decision. The
higher margins can then be used to invest in even
more brand stability. In times of economic
recession, clients look for solid ground and often
end up with the brands they know will do what
they promise. In following articles, I'll show you
that building a brand doesn't have to be
expensive.

More free inspiration?

www.richardvanhooijdonk.com
7. Always choose for a
crossmedial
communication chain
aimed at your target
audience
Your client uses multiple media simultaneously.
This is no longer limited to offline media such as
print, radio and television. Consumers have
become fully crossmedial, exposing themselves to
all crossmedial stimuli before choosing to convert.
Today's consumer combines radio and internet,
television and print, a phone conversation and the
direct mail they receive. The ultimate combination
of crossmedial instruments is the combination
that gives the best returns, and it may not always
be the most obvious combination. It takes
creativity, a lot of testing and analyzing to figure
out your perfect crossmedia combination, and it
won't be the same for different target groups. A
communication chain for a young target group will
contain a lot more online media, while an older
target group will prefer more offline media. An
interesting fact however, is that online sales in Q3
and Q4 are largely determined by the latter
category: older people do find their way online.
When setting up your crossmedial communication
chain, make sure to put your channels in the right
order. Study the customer insights and find out
which instruments are used. Study the
combinations used and the results. Once you've
figured out which instruments to use, you can
determine their functions, content and
connection. For instance, you could launch a
teaser through text messages: the content will
have to be interesting and connected to the follow-
up direct mail or e-mail. A similar procedure can
be used for television and radio commercials, a
mini website, specific online campaigns or
telesales. For each target group and for each
action, you engage the right instruments.
Having done so, it's time to take a look at the
campaign management system and keep track of
the results in a crossmedial campaign dashboard.
Often, executing a campaign using your own
'systems' is impossible: new techniques or
possibilities are limited when a marketer's own IT
department is not up-to-date. When it comes to
crossmedial campaigns, outsourcing is often a
viable if not the only solution. The costs are worth
it: in return you gain speed and flexibility. Smart
crossmedial campaigns can lead to very
significant and very large results. Keep in mind
though, as said in a previous article, when it
comes to innovations and launching new
processes: start small, finish big!
8. Affect behavior by event
driven marketing
By nature, I'm a bit of a lazy guy. I'll gladly invest
time, money and effort into a project, but if there
are no solid returns to look forward to I won't
bother. My laziness also means I'll automate
everything I can, leaving me time for smarter,
more fun things to do. Marketing communication
is one of the areas where automating can be used
to great extent, especially when it comes to lead-,
cross- and upsell processes. Our automating
process starts with the marketing database. Here
we find the triggers for actions we'd like to see
automatised. There are clients who purchased,
clients who didn't, clients who bought a lot of
groups of relations we've not heard from for a
while. We see birthdays, surfing behavior,
newsletter requests or participation in online
games. We see certain target groups reaching
certain customer values, we see complaints or
unpaid bills. All of these things are triggers, and
we've got dozens or perhaps even hundreds of
them. It makes sense that event driven marketing
brings the strongest results. Afterall, it's the
client's own actions (an order, complaint,
download...) that invite interaction. We can't
imagine a better time to act, so long as the
interaction is relevent and brought at the right
time using the right tools. Based on set triggers,
we can design event driven campaigns, started
automatically when a certain action occurs.
Some examples. A customer could automatically
receive an invitation to a seminar after having
purchased a certain product. A customer who
hires a car could automatically receive directions
through a text message. A health insurance
agency could automatically offer additional
insurances, such as dental care for the kids, when
a client buys a basic insurance package. How did
you know the client had kids? Why, it was in your
marketing database of course, which in turn
you've coupled to your event driven marketing
systems!
Theater visitors can be connected to their favorite
artists: before the show, during the show, and
after the show. Amusement park visitors often buy
tickets online. So two weeks before they visit your
park, you send them an exciting overview of your
amusement park, invite them for an online game,
you let them share their results with friends and
they can receive a small prize at the amusement
park.
.
Event driven marketing offers endless ways of
automatised interaction with target groups,
sending every client his own personal campaign,
with the right content at the right time. Text, direct
mail, personal mini sites, e-mail or personal
contact can all be used to interact with the client.
Coincidentally, this builds on a company's promise
to open a dialogue with the client. If done well,
this dialogue is bound to raise loyalty and boost
buzz among clients and prospects. I believe that
with event driven marketing, 60 to 80% of your
cross- and upsell can be fully automatised, while
most of your lead management can be
automatised through 'thank you's, comfirmations
and phonecalls.
When considering effective marketing and cost
reducing measures, event driven marketing comes
to mind. Another challenge where event driven
marketing works very well, is structurally improving
customer value, an otherwise difficult task during
recessions. Customer value is where a company
gets its profits, and this way we execute our
marketing at the most effective moment,
automatically!
Event driven marketing ensures we stimulate the
company / customer dialogue and ensures we
don't miss any sales moments, because all
phases of our customer relationship are detected
by the automatic triggers. Our IT is ready for it:
several campaign management systems support
event driven marketing. It's up to us marketers to
develop the campaigns and identify the triggers.
9. Create a website that
inspires and 'sticks'
For years, website conversion has been stuck at
3%. This means 97% of all visitors does not buy,
does not download or does not sign up.
Despite all of our knowledge and techniques,
we're still not able to improve this figure. Visitors
are quick to leave: online, we have five to ten
seconds at most to inspire a visitor. If we don't,
he's gone. This 'inspiration' could be anything
ranging from a personal video, interactivity or
games to surprising content based on behavioral
targeting or profile information.
After 'inspiration' (marketer seduces client to stay)
follow 'connection' (marketer poses a question),
'dialogue' (marketer and consumer talk) and
'conversion' (consumer buys from marketer). We
have to facilitate each of these phases online to
improve the results from our web presence. Online
visitors have to be placed in an environment and
atmosphere that puts them at ease and gently
pushes them toward wanting to do what we want
them to do: I call this the 'pre-experience'. It allows
visitors to almost experience online what they'll
experience when they've bought our product or
service, stimulating conversion. If a website visitor
can almost feel or experience our product or
service online as if it were the real thing, our
website results will be significantly higher than the
'digital brochures' most companies call their
websites.

So pay attention to your 'pre-experience' and think
about what kind of experience could raise
conversion. Just think of what you'd do when
you're talking with a client: you shake your client
or prospect's hand, you use your charm and
playfully find out his desires or needs. That's how
you get that final signature beneath the contract.
Translating these interactions to an online
environment, we're looking at video Q&A, personal
avatars and behavioral targeting. There are more
examples. For instance, think of the excitement
and energy of people in a rollercoaster ride, on a
beautiful summer's day. Could you grab that
feeling, grab that energy, personalize it and
unleash it in an online environment? Yes, yes you
can! Just look at Nike, Adidas or Meez, who let you
create your own online avatar, bringing the
shopping experience to your computer monitor
Remaking' your current website can be very
interesting, if coupled with concrete targets.
Websites are more and more becoming
commercially important tools and we've got to
prove that. It's not just sales goals though. We may
be looking for profiles (containing client
information), e-mail addresses, research data, or
leads and prospects. Those other data are
valuable too. Putting those in our business case,
it'll pave the road toward getting the budgets you
need for serious Webpresence 2.0.
10. Optimize your channels
During the purchasing process, consumers
seldomly limit themselves to using just one
channel.
More free inspiration?
www.richardvanhooijdonk.com
During the purchasing process, consumers
seldomly limit themselves to using just one
channel. They get their information online or from
stores, they search comparison sites and check
out your competition before deciding where to buy.
The product is then delivered by mail, clients
receive further instructions through e-mail or
telephone. Accessories are bought online or at the
store, people browse through mail order
catalogues and then browse online to find more
information. Orders come in through coupon,
online forms, telephone; returning items is done
by mail; complaints are expressed by phone. Even
the average carpenter faces channel innovation.
Returning customers place orders by phone or
online. Interested prospects check out the website
after viewing an online campaign, which included
a zip code application to help them find the
nearest store location. Any complaints are
returned to the carpenter by phone, personally
handled by the service department.
These examples show how many different
channels can be used during a purchasing
process. Your company attracts clients, informs
and advises, places transactions, offers support
and generally builds upon the relationship with the
client. Consumers don't limit themselves to
specific channels, so why should you?
To prevent disappointing your clients, it's
important to ensure your channel output complies
with customer expectations. Walk through your
channels and find out which needs and desires
are the most important per channel. Analyzing and
optimising your channels and purchasing process
phases can lead to significant cost reductions and
improvements on return.
11. Obtain real-time
insights in campaign results
Many companies fail to obtain the required insight
in their campaigns' marketing results. It's not that
hard to get those insights though, and it's
impossible to properly adjust your actions without
realizing the crossmedial results your campaigns
are returning. My experience is that good insights
in customer value and campaign results directly
lead to better decisions. It doesn't matter if you're
spending millions or just a couple thousand
dollars on marketing: with the right insights, you
can adjust quicker, make better decisions and be
ready to strike when the market shows
opportunities. Companies who do obtain real-time
insights in campaign results, will perform better
than their competitors.
I'd even go so far as to say a campaign should not
be launched, if its results cannot be presented: it's
the most important investment for any commercial
organisation.
12. Pay attention to
individual customer profiles
Existing clients are five times as profitable as new
clients. This means we have to pay extra attention
to our existing group of clients. I already noted I
believe mass media will disappear eventually. This
means something else will take its place. The
existing customer and prospect database plays a
big role here. They're your ambassadors, your
clients, your network. They chose to become your
client or at least show interest in becoming your
client. It's not about how large your database is
though, it's about the information stored within
and the connection between you and your client. A
big list of names is useless, but when we combine
the list with profiles and preferable attitudes
toward our company, we're in business.
A customer profile is a dynamic entity and will
have to be kept up-to-date continuously. Using
intelligent '2.0' techniques, our relationships set
their own preferences and intelligently, we design
new questions for clients to answer each month,
wrapping them up in games, virals and online
interviews. This means we can playfully extend our
individual client knowledge base. We extrapolate
and enrichen our databases with external
information and browsing behavior.
A large group of loyal, 'profiled' relationships is an
important source of power for any company. These
clients create revenue, new clients, feedback, cost
control (cheaper revenue), positive buzz and social
branding. If we can build a profile and store
behavioral information as well, we can use this
information for a personalized approach. Based
on browsing behavior, purchases and client-
induced buzz, we can create personalized
websites, event driven marketing or reward
systems.
Customer profiles are accurately turned into an
effective marketing approach, lower costs and a
source for new clients. That makes individual
customer profiles an imporant cost saving tool,
excellent for times of recession.
13. Develop and activate
your distribution channels
Many products are sold through dealerships or
networks of interim sales elements tied to the
brand name. An important advantage here lies in
spreading sales efforts over a larger amount of
stores.
A disadvantage lies in controlling the marketing
and sales processes. Afterall, these dealerships
can choose between multiple products, brands
and suppliers. The biggest challenge is gaining
and keeping their loyalty. If they're satisfied with
the dealer proposition, that may lead to a strong
growth of sales across the whole network. A
powerful dealer strategy contains at least these
elements: the right selection of products, the right
margins, training and service, intelligent
marketing communication tools, pull marketing
and prospect / lead rewards. Time, money and
resources are often scarce and profits are the
most important target, so segmenting and
managing your dealer channels is crucial.
Internet and new distribution insights influence
commercial results. Customers don't always stick
to one supplier anymore. For instance, they can
now buy their health insurance through the local
football club, as it's made arrangements with the
insurance agency. Their DELL computer is bought
at the local supermarket, not the computer store.
The grocery store allows credit, national
organisations offer cheap law insurances for
businesses. Business-to-business markets are
showing changes in distribution as well:
companies have to pay attention to possible
partnerships for certain target segments. It's
expected the partner market will be divided over
the coming years and considering partnerships
are always aimed at the long term, it's of great
importance to design a strong distribution
strategy. The organisation has to be suited to the
distribution strategy. Good distribution partners
can allow for larger volumes, new target groups
and lower costs.
14. Don't stop innovating!
Society is changing, consumers and businesses
are changing. This means the commercial strategy
must constantly evolve as well: standing still
means falling behind. The basic principle of
marketing is fulfilling the needs of our target
audiences in order to reach optimal commercial
results. When those needs change, the company
needs to change as well to increase marketing
strength and uniqueness. Facilitating this constant
change requires investing in innovation.
Innovation has to become a key element to the
organisational processes.
We pay our bills, lease our cars, hire new staff and
invest in new computer equipment. Oddly enough,
innovation often falls by the wayside. It's
something we'll add if, after paying all the other
bills, we still have some time, money and tools left
over. But if we want to take commercial progress
seriously, we must give innovation a place of its
own in our business, and invest a certain
percentage of our returns or profits into
commercial development. Of course, when doing
so we'll use succesful business cases. In times of
economic recession, innovation offers the
opportunity to become cheaper, smarter, better.
It's of utmost importance to keep an anticyclical
mind and to use bad times to invest in profitable
innovation.
every week. Discuss the most interesting
developments that are relevant to your company:
stay up-to-date, stay sharp.
More free inspiration?
www.richardvanhooijdonk.com
16. Visit the gym three
times a week and drink
fresh Smoothies!
My final subject is not directly related to
marketing, but rather to the energy you need to
perform at your best every single day. An active
marketer uses a lot of energy. Your body needs
weekly refills, so find a gym you like and work out
at least three times a week. Create a good training
schedule and train for at least an hour and a half
per session. Finish with a sauna and a delicious
milkshake after your training, you'll come home
reborn! Fruit offers you the daily energy you need
to keep your body healthy and fit. Get a good
blender and, every morning, blend a fresh shake
with two apples, two oranges, a couple of
raspberries, yoghurt and a bit of milk.
You're now ready for Marketing 2.0, you're ready to
face the recession. Good luck!.

15. Stay up-to-date, stay

sharp
Marketing is changing. Worldwide there are
companies, marketers, researchers, marketing
agencies and creative minds at work to realise
these changes. Every day new brilliant ideas
appear, remarkable campaigns appear, cases are
thought through carefully, new techniques and
opinions emerge. Ten years ago it was difficult to
get a hold of this information, but today bloggers,
twitters, online video and marketing agents are
constantly providing us with an overload of
information. Every day, I get up at 6.30am to scan
the information, to organize it and process it in my
presentations, plans and speeches. It's my job as
inspirator and strategist. I develop my own
personal vision and share it with the world, I use
the vision of others to improve myself. That's how
marketing 2.0 works. So to stay up-to-date
yourself, to stay sharp with current developments,
sign up on http://reader.google.com. Through the
RSS reader, you can follow all your favorite
weblogs, read articles, share, archive and pass on.
You can bookmark your favorite websites at
http://www.delicious.com: millions of internet
surfers mark their favorite websites daily, tagging
them with key words like 'marketing', 'virals' and
thousands of other tags. It's an easy way to create
an impressive collection of links to articles and
research while also profiting from the knowledge
and 'bookmarks' from hundreds of thousands of
other users. Share your findings with your team

Weblog: richardvanhooijdonk.com
E-mail: richard@vanhooijdonk.com
Linkedin.com/in/vanhooijdonk
Twitter: rvhooijdonk
Phone direct: +31641330000
This edition is also
available as a
powerseminar and
workshop
About
Richard van
Hooijdonk:
Richard van Hooijdonk (41) was marketing director
at several organisations in Europe. He is now very
much in demand as speaker and chairman at
international congresses, both in Europe and the
United States. Richard is a lecturer at SRM/
Erasmus University and Nyenrode Business
University. His specialisation: to inspire businesses
to adapt their commercial strategy to the new
marketing economy (marketing 2.0)
To do this, Richard employs the ten step IMKSA
method. The IMKSA method readies businesses for
the new marketing economy by Inspiration,
Motivation, Knowledge, Skills and Assurance.
Richard developed The New MarketingCycle and
‘Marketing 2.0’. To businesses and marketers, this
model offers valuable insights in the components of
and their connections to the commercial strategy. He
also initiated the educational course Marketing 2.0.
Seminars available worldwide. Ask for schedule.
More than 20.000 people joined Richard’s sessions
‘Heading for Marketing 2.0’. For video’s:
www.richardvanhooijdonk.com
Strategy-consulting, education or
inspiration. Worldwide services
available?
Call +31641330000 or send mail to
richard@vanhooijdonk.com