In the last few weeks, a few ideas about the future of marketing have been swirling in my head. A key influence has been Douglas Rushkoff's Get Back in the Box as well as a number of experiences during a recent trip which made me ache for good customer service.
We recently drove down to San Francisco from Vancouver. It was part-vacation, part-business trip. Over the 10 days, we ended up staying at 4 different hotels:
Nights 1 & 9: Eugene, OR - Comfort Suites
Night 2: San Francisco, CA - Bay Landing Hotel
Nights 3-5: Sonoma, CA - MacArthur Place
Nights 6-8: San Francisco, CA - Westin St. Francis
One of these hotels was chosen for me - the Westin St. Francis was the conference hotel for BlogHer.
The second of these hotels, the Bay Landing Hotel, was chosen based on Word of Mouth - a recommendation from a friend, Lucy. I told Lucy that we were headed to SF. She mentioned a hotel that she, her husband and young son stayed at - lots of room, reasonable price and near the airport. These were actually all of my requirements, so I checked it out online to make sure they had high-speed Internet access and then booked it.
The third and fourth hotels were initially driven based on a geographic requirement. We knew we wanted to stay somewhere around Eugene because it is close to the half-way point between Vancouver and Eugene (once you factor in the typical two-hour wait at the border). Starting with a Google mapping of Eugene, I then used the "Find Businesses" option to search for hotels in Eugene. We wanted someplace near the highway and a respectable chain. After mousing over a few results on the map, I found the Comfort Suites. Checked out their website. Confirmed some details. Made a reservation.
The process for the MacArthur Place was similar. I knew we wanted our home base in wine country to be Sonoma, so I searched for hotels near Sonoma. And then the richness of Google Maps really came into play. They pull in reviews from at least 10 different travel sites as well as web pages, photos, videos and other user-created content. It's really quite amazing what Google collects to make your job of travel coordinator a lot easier.
After sifting through about a dozen places in Sonoma and their reviews/ratings/etc, I settled on the MacArthur Place. A quick check of their website confirmed they fit the requirements - reservations made online. Done!
None of my purchasing decisions were made based on information through "traditional" marketing channels.
One through a strategic partnership.
One via WOM.
Two via the hyperlocal Google Maps channel.
It just drives me a little crazy when I know how much money is spent on TV ads and newspaper ads and branding - when you really just need to figure out where your customer is when they are making a purchasing decision and provide them the right info at that time to make the decision for your product.
Seems pretty straight-foward to get your business on Google Maps. Plus they have a really comprehensive guide to using the service (note to self - spending some time reading Google FAQs may not be a bad thing).
And then take the 90% of your budget that you've saved and spend it on your customers like Lucy: beef up your customer service or enhance your product offering. So that great WOM will happen for you.
Photo Credit: mischiru
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