It's time, the experts say, to move beyond marketing to women, marketing to men, marketing to kids... it's time to market to people.
Now, it's not that women and men and kids aren't people, but...when we label them or box them into groups, people, as a whole, resent it. Men don't like to be categorized according to the way they dress or by what they read. Women don't like being lumped all together, even if we do like to go to the ladies room together. And kids - anyone who professes to understand kids as a whole, please go to the head of the class! Kids are about as predictable as the weather!
That said, it does help to "group" people according to certain traits - in order to engage them in conversation and by virtue of your listening skills, to begin to understand them. Understanding your market, what a concept!
Enter Generation V - a new look at an old idea: meeting at the well marketing.
Generation V - V for Virtual, is part of today's marketing strategy. Gartner research has a great outline and article on what they call Generation V, which starts by saying, "The online behavior, attitudes and interests of people from all walks of life are blending together online..."
In a Forbes article dated April 3rd of this year, they say, "In 10 years, the largest influence on all purchases will be the virtual experiences associated with them [the 1.2 billion people expected to be online by 2011], and therefore, more money will be spent marketing and selling to multiple online personae than marketing and selling offline." The empasis is mine.
This is a group of PEOPLE not defined by AGE, or GENDER, or SOCIAL standing!! Generation Virtual - you're part of it. I'm part of it. Our kids LIVE in it!
How then, do you market to it? To THEM - the Generation Virtual folk who are online at this very moment Twittering, or blogging, or commenting on a blog, or reading an e-book?
Forbes says it best, "...the value set of Generation V differs subtly from that of its predecessors. Its members have an overwhelming belief in a meritocratic environment: the value of collaboration, that "we" is more powerful and valuable than "me" and that sharing increases the value of something rather than diminishes or erodes it."
Are you paying attention? Are the female customers you want to reach a part of Generation V? You bet they are! They are powerful, engaged, connected, and they are ageless. Understand their interest in community building and you are on the way to understanding them.
HINT: They do not want you to create a new community for them to join! They want you to participate in the communities they already belong to. Their mantra (IMHO) is: I Link, Therefore, I Am.
Mary, that is true. But, it's a fact of life. Irreverence and humor usually float to the top. I submit that the great blogs on business, the serious writers, have good readers and the kind of traffic and interactivity that reflects their hard work.
We're in the "niche market" part of the blogopshere. It suits me well.
And yes, every now and then, one of the big boys or girls does notice... but, in-between, I'm happy with you and all of my other readers. You are the cream of the crop to me.
Posted by: Yvonne DiVita | August 21, 2008 at 08:32 AM
I have one concern - to get top readership and therefore the budgets of business, you need to be flippant, or irreverant, or funny or anything other than tackling serious subjects. The top read blogs according to the article were on fashion and health. Fluff brings in the eyes. I hope this is just an early adopter trend and as the blogoshere matures, readers go for hard hitting blogs like they do hard hitting news.
Posted by: Mary | August 20, 2008 at 12:33 PM