Gap, like most retailers in the midst of our great recession, held tight to its marketing dollars.  Now, with the worst behind us and the economy picking up steam, Gap is looking to shift its marketing strategy to lure new customers.  In this MarketWatch article by Andria Cheng, we examine their past pitfalls and new strategy as they position themselves for a Q2 comeback.

I am a huge fan of the Gap, always have been…  In fact, when I was in Europe and lost my luggage, Gap basically saved my life!  So it pained me, when they had The Gap Mishap, to address what I saw as a major flaw in their communication strategy.  However, I commend Gap on this effort and am interested to see if focusing on acquisition will pay off.

It seems they have all the pieces of the puzzle, target marketing, social media and budget allocation, in place.  They’ve also diversified their brand, not only into different price-point retailers but different apparel offerings as well (athletic-wear, footwear, etc.) All in all, I see a promising future for the Gap. I just hope they’ll continue with a slew of new commercial messages featuring brightly-colored tweens, dancing around in their latest styles!

What do you think… Can Gap make a comeback?

Companies today have endless opportunities to gain your business…  Frequent flier miles, reward perks, cash back, coupons, points, fans, friends, followers, you name it!  But what does it actually take to gain your loyalty… And keep it?

I recently asked myself this question when I lost my keys… Amidst the massive amount of key tags to just about every merchant in Southern California!  What I realized was threefold.

First and foremost, some of my favorite retailers don’t even HAVE loyalty programs!  Take Trader Joe’s for example.  I go there about once a week (OK twice but the second time is just for the free fare) and I’m not getting any points or prizes; I am loyal to them because of their low prices and quality food.

Secondly, I will admit – the loyalty programs of several retailers do keep me honest, typically because they offer free product samples.  Take Aveda for instance.  Their prices are a little steep, so I like that I can select my favorites before committing to the cost of the full size item.

Finally, program or not, keeping a loyal customer is a never-ending job.  Those who do it well are customer service oriented and constantly reinventing themselves through social media or new and interesting messaging, like MAC for example.  I recently received a thank you card for making a purchase.  It may not be the “greenest” way to gain my trust but I will admit it did intrigue me…  A thank you card for shopping I was going to do anyway?!  You are welcome MAC!  Not to mention they also have a recycling program in which six containers gets you one free product.  It’s companies like these that will always have a place in my heart… And on my key chain;-)

Where are your loyalties and why?

WOMM, or Word of Mouth Marketing, is what people are talking about… Literally.  Why you ask? With all the messaging out there, it is harder than ever to cut through the clutter and get your customers’ attention. WOMM, first and foremost, has one of the highest ROIs of any medium. It’s essentially free advertising (and who doesn’t like to get something for nothing…) in the form of a testimonial from an existing client who is marketing your company to a person who trusts their opinion. In turn, they now trust you! Genius!! So what is WOMM exactly and how do you leverage it?

Vocus presented a PDF from Ted Wright of Fizz Corp. recently, discussing WOMM in detail. I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting some key points below:

• People trust others – 68% trust other people “like themselves”
• That trust extends to product advice – 92% cite WOMM as best source for product ideas
• People talk and do so frequently – 112 marketing relevant conversations per person occur per week
• The majority of WOM conversations are occurring offline – 71% of conversations are face-to-face

So what is the recipe for WOMM success?

• Identify a “leadership” group
• Find the talkers
• Give them something to talk about
• Create the tools to get the movement started
• Allow people to join the movement
• Measure results

Let’s give ‘em something to talk about, let’s talk about WOMM!

One of the blogs that I read regularly is IncSlingers, they usually have great posts and their topics hit home. The post today discussed the true cost of social media and asked that companies start to consider how they are using these tools. The point to the article was to consider the methods that you choose to deploy when using social media – and that you should avoid the ‘silo’ approach of just forcing out content without thinking about the end user. While the overall point was good, I think he missed a very important piece of the puzzle – the actual cost associated with social media management.

He included one line about the true cost: “The truth is, good Social Media, like any other form of Marketing Communication is not free, nor is it particularly cheap”. And while this point was right on, I didn’t think the article expanded on it enough, and I wanted to add some of my own thoughts on the matter.

I would start by changing that line to:

“The truth is, good Social Media, is among the most expensive form of Marketing Communications, and incorrect usage can cost your company more than any other medium”.

And then add on:

“While things like mailings, commercials and print advertisements can all be supremely expensive, the likelihood of one of them being passed around as much as a tweet or a blog post is slim. People share content that is easy to share. Which means if a company were to fail to represent itself well through a tweet, or worse, say something inappropriate in a tweet, that would travel much faster than a poorly done print ad.

Secondly, with mediums like twitter and blogging, once you hit tweet or publish, it’s there for the world to see. There is no reviewing, no drafts, no back and forth with copywriters, designers and print teams. There is so much more of a margin for error with social media, and devaluing it’s power is extremely dangerous. I can not count the number of companies who hire young kids with no idea about branding and strategy to manage a twitter account – and then don’t understand why it isn’t successful. Social Media is entirely about branding, and you should be hiring (and paying) someone who understands the proper way to relate to customers while creating a brand. Risking the brand you’ve built to a fresh faced kid with no concern for what happens in the long run? Dangerous any way you look at it. The person you entrust your brand to in social media needs to be experienced, trained and will be expensive.”

What do you think? Is the expense of social media overlooked? Do companies give enough time, credit and money to the tools or are they selling their brand short?

I have a severe problem with everyone who insists that social media and web presence is the future and that traditional marketing is dead. Social media and the web are merely two more arrows in our quiver of marketing tools, not the only arrows.

15 years ago, if you had a website, you were ahead of the times. Now, if you don’t have a website, blog, facebook, linkedin, twitter and youtube, people are surprised. But the sites don’t do you any good unless you have built a brand that people are looking for or you have used other ways to market to get people to those sites. People aren’t just going to find you. You have to do something, brand yourself and market yourself, so that people will want to find you. This means combining traditional marketing with your new web marketing in order to get the results that you want. Combining them, meaning use them both.

Of course there are also those people who either don’t use or refuse to use the web as their tool for company/product research. I know at least a handful of people that couldn’t imagine finding out whats hot to buy via the web. If they can’t touch or hear the advertisement, it isn’t an advertisement to them. So your precious website doesn’t matter to them anyway, and guess who is going to get their business? The company who still runs a gorgeous ad in a magazine. Even for someone like me who loves social media/web, there is something beautiful about picking up a 300 page glossy magazine and browsing through the advertisements for haute couture clothing and jewelry I can only dream about. And what about the rustle of newspaper between my hands as I read through the comics and browse the sales pages on Sunday? Definitely worth the $1.25.

Don’t worry, I already know what you’re thinking: “So what if you don’t think it’s dead, the fact is that magazine/newspaper readership is dropping across the country and the number of subscriptions has fallen to a dismal number.” And you’d be right, it is dropping and significantly! But is that totally the fault of ‘web 2.0′? I highly doubt it. I believe that too many of us have drank the kool-aid and have convinced ourselves that traditional marketing doesn’t matter. So, we have stopped running magazine ads, pulled out of the newspapers and traded direct mail for email. What we’ve really done is cripple ourselves and destroyed a huge part of our marketing arsenal.

I believe that if we were to re-embrace traditional marketing in combination with social marketing, we would see an upswing in our sales. But of course, this is just my humble opinion.

What do you think? Can we embrace both or is it a one or the other world?