Mutual Marketing entwines customer relationship management with social responsibility practices to build sustainable organizations.
We are business analysts in these areas, offering research, facilitation, and training services, to help clients collaborate with stakeholders, and respond innovatively to these market shaping forces.

On this page you’ll find jottings on the art of mutual marketing: use these ideas to inspire your own market thinking

Do you ask yourself any of the following:-

• How can I cut costs and give customers a better experience
• Is there climate change or isn’t there?
• How do I allocate my digital marketing spend?
• Do we give out plastic bags?
• Is there any benefit to us in Facebook?
• How can we compete with China on labour costs - should we use ’slave’ labour?
• Advertising isn’t working - what about word of mouth?
• How do I engage marketing with the call centre data - they are so busy with fluffy creative?

If so the answer is not a tactical one. It is a fundamental change in organization mindset from product marketing for mass consumption to conversational marketing to mass innovation. New ‘mutual’ marketing has three rules

• Join in the conversation
• The business of business is social
• Be ‘of service’ to stakeholders

Many organizations ask customers what they want: that’s a mistake. How does the customer know? Errrrmmm I’d like that widget in pink and tuned into Radio Mars please.

Meanwhile, in HR the latest employee satisfaction survey (fashionably renamed engagement survey) shows that front line employees dislike the lack of two way communication, and a ‘them and us’ attitude by managers. Although job roles are clear, customer service is seen to have a high priority, and only 7% rate it a poor place to work.

Killing two birds with one stone

In the traditional, unconnected organization these issues might well remain unconnected. When the answer to both is the same – engage front line staff by asking them to be the voice of the customer, and involve them in product and service design. Set them free from the chains of transactional measures, and recognize their importance as insight workers. For not only do they understand what customers want – after all they deal with them day to day – but they also understand what the solutions are - because they know your business.

It may be very true that senior managers are out of touch with customer needs, but it is highly unlikely that your front line staff are!

When your service giving staff are used in this way, customer service moves from the end of the ‘make and sell’ process into the heart of the customer proposition design – and lo sales through service gets in the DNA.

(Extract from Engaging Employees the John Lewis Way more…..)

Proctor & Gamble have been experimenting with social media since 2001 when a plummeting share price led them to conclude that they needed market responsive R&D. They set up their ‘connect and develop’ programme, and detailed a group of ‘technology entrepreneurs’ to search out new ideas, and connect with “the majority of the world’s consumers” – a tall order. They then left them to work out how to do it. The result is now a huge bank of workable social techniques that gives P&G competitive advantage and which, as a by product, has reduced R& D costs by over 20%.

It is, perhaps, prophetic that one of the great 20^th century mass consumption, product marketing brands, is now doing the same with 21^st century relationship marketing for mass innovation. For as manufacturing moves to lower cost economies that is where Western competitive advantage lies. Sustainable business is why socialising with customers in the long term is of enormous value. Rather than the one way ticket of ‘go to market’ channels and communication media, we have to create the return on conversational marketing and web 2.0.