Radical Marketing is a term that describes those companies that are breaking the rules of traditional marketing. These companies focus on building customer loyalty through a variety of means, such as creating dedicated communities of fans and using creative public relations.
These companies often have a small Radical Marketing department that is run directly by the CEO. This allows the senior management to be very in touch with the company’s customers and also ensures that the marketing team does not get bogged down with bureaucracy.
They do not have huge advertising budgets as they believe that these are a form of entitlement and encourage spending when there is no need. They are not afraid to use one-to-one communication tools such as direct mail and local advertising to communicate with their audience.
In contrast, mainstream marketers tend to employ more expensive broadcast marketing methods. This is because these methods are effective in reaching a large number of people at the same time, but can be costly and impractical for smaller companies.
This book examines how some of these smaller companies have succeeded in marketing their products by ignoring all traditional principles and practices, and in doing so, they have built a loyal base of dedicated fans that go out of their way to support them. This strategy has been credited to companies such as Harley-Davidson, the Grateful Dead and Saturn.
These companies have taken a long-term view of the market and focused their resources on building a brand that would stand out from the competition. They were able to achieve this by stretching their resources, living close to their customers and developing more satisfying solutions to their customers’ needs.
They create a community of fans that are loyal to their brands and have become an extension of the company themselves, with some of these fans going so far as to have their bodies tattooed with the logos of their favourite products.
The senior management in these ‘radical’ companies do not see their customers as a group defined by demographic or psychographic characteristics, but rather they are seen as people who are very much like them. They believe that their customers’ needs and preferences are the same as their own, and they strive to satisfy them by delivering quality products and providing a great experience for the customer.
These companies also believe that they should focus on building a loyal community of fans, which in turn can help them to develop the product and make it more appealing to future generations. These loyal customers can then act as brand ambassadors for the company, and can even be used as part of promotional campaigns.