Workflow marketing

Marketing should be a means to generate a conversation with your customers. Engage with them, identify their needs, pains and introduce your solution and value proposition. I am of the belief that this conversation, to be successful, needs to be done within that customers particular workflow. I call this approach Workflow marketing.

Workflow marketing is introducing your product when it is needed in a prospects daily routine. Interacting at the right moment is where social networking, blogs, ratings, wikis, audio, groups, etc. are so powerful because they are becoming ingrained in our every day routine and firms can leverage these tools to interact with prospects to start a conversation.

Workflow marketing is the opposite of flooding people with information in the hopes that they will remember you when the time is right. The key is to be there when your customer is seeking what they need as they will be more open to a dialog. Obviously, this is similar to behavioral marketing and targeting but I think it goes beyond those tools because it is less intrusive, less obvious and more welcoming to the prospect.

Are you really what you think you are?

A few years ago I joined a small team at Polaroid to try and set up a corporate venture fund to incubate new digital businesses. These new services would help diversify the firms revenue stream away from film sales and help take advantage of the emerging SaaS and other Internet business models. Our focus was primarily on the commercial side, a division that produced over $1b in revenue in its hey day.

It sounds like a good match; Polaroid and the web. Both instant and sharable. However, Polaroid did not understand that they were a workflow company. For example, P&C insurers were big customers as they would use Polaroid film to document damage, staple it to a form, and mail it in to be processed. We propposed that this workflow was undergoing a shift to digital, with digital forms and pictures streamlining the process and Polaroid was well positioned with compression technogy, digital image knowledge, and a giant customer base with real contacts and brand equity.

Despite these advantages, the recurring refrain at the executive level was: "But, where is the print.?"
Just because you were something yesterday does not mean it is what you will be or need to be tomorrow.