I’m really very fortunate to work with some of the most forward-thinking companies in the UK, but sometimes they just plain don’t understand this Net thing.
This week I had a meeting with a large client who has spent over £10m on his web strategy since 2005. Big money, big ideas and huge amounts of success. Ace.
As part of the (large) strategy is a very successful forum, it’s the only one in their space and it stands large and dominating. They rarely have to moderate it and have a great community of about 6,000 registered users and around 50,000 lurkers every year reading 20,000 posts. It cost less than £5,000 to setup in 2003 - what a bargain!
It’s a great opportunity to communicate to their ‘family’, their customers, their messengers. It could be the most influential element of their brand. In the world of semantic trust, social networking, link-sharing and search engines it offers a unique (in their marketplace) opportunity.
Last year they spent less than £500 and 1hr a week looking after it. Not surprisingly it’s dying. That is dysfunctional marketing.
Put simply, they just don’t get it. What a waste.
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 pm
A neighbour has completely outsourced her dog.
Her husband did not want a dog. Her 2 children did. She went and bought a pedigree spaniel puppy for $900 about 6 months ago.
After a few weeks she got bored with the whole thing. So she started to pay another neighbour to have the pup for weekends. Then she started to pay a dog-walking agency to come every day and take the dog out for a walk.
The dog really only sleeps at the family house now and is sometimes on family photos.
But it does get a lot of love from these paid helpers. They are all doggy people and just love being around dogs - unlike the family. Patting, stroking, liking the smell of wet-dog, these all come naturally to these doggy peeps.
Maybe the client could out-source the forum to someone who could inject the love ?