Lack of Budget Hinders, WOM Helps, Brand Loyalty
Senior level marketers say their loyalty efforts are hindered by insufficient budgets (48.8%), lack of leadership vision (41.6%), spotty customer service (33.7%), ineffective insight tools (32%), lack of top management support (28.2%), indifference to innovation (27.8%), poor product/service quality (23.4%), an insufficient database (23.4%), lack of loyalty programs (21.6%), and an over reliance on pure demographics (19.9%), according to a November/December 2006 Reveries.com survey.
In her analysis, titled "Loyalty, Harley Style," Dori Molitor, founder and CEO of the consultancy/agency WomanWise LLC, offers brand marketers a solution that bypasses a majority of these loyalty roadblocks. Molitor suggests that brand marketers should focus on effectively creating a "deep-soul connection" with consumers by feeding cultural values -- which can be accomplished with a variety word of mouth marketing techniques, including cause marketing (see http://www.womma.org/casestudy/create-a-cause/). According to Molitor, using cultural values as a way to promote products "can enrich the lives of each and every one of their consumers, which in turn enriches the community, society, and the world at large."
