Christian Carlsson sent me a very interesting article today in AdAge, showing how Kraft Foods is getting customers to pay for an application, view ads, and then go out and buy Kraft products. How can Kraft pull off that kind of trifecta? It all starts with using digital marketing to be truly helpful to their customers.
So, Kraft Foods now has IFood Assistant, an application customers willingly pay 99 cents for, which shows them recipes, yes, but also shows ads along the way. And, yes, the recipes call for Kraft products. Such a racket, huh? How does Kraft get away with this?
They are helping their customers. It’s that simple.
Your question should be, “How can I help my customers?” Kraft decided that people are busy, but they’d still like to eat well, they’d like to save money over restaurant fare, and they like to cook. Then they did something about it.
You don’t have to do some cool iPhone app. In fact, that’s probably wrong for your business. Kraft wanted to reach people while they are shopping in a grocery store, but most businesses would do fine to to use the Web over a standard computer connection.
The point is that you need to find a customer need that’s just as pressing as what Kraft found. You need to think about what your customers need and how you can help them. If you do, you can find customers voluntarily spending time with your marketing message instead of interrupting them.
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