Even if we could achieve one-to-one marketing in practice, and even if anyone wanted it, I maintain that it's still mass marketing. It is not possible to market at this level.

It almost goes without saying that one-to-one marketing is the major goal of all marketing. I'm not so sure it's a good idea?

One-to-one marketing has been a distant promise for years. After all this time, we have to wonder... is it even possible?

In the world of ROI measuring, it seems that advertising always wins over marketing. Advertising has very measurable costs and very measurable benefits, while marketing seems to have neither.

The position chart is ubiquitous. A set of X and Y axes representing 2 dimensions in the market and dots representing company's positions with respect to those dimensions. There are many versions. Price v. Quality. Capabilities v. Price. Price v. Value. Luxury v. Reliability. Price v. Economy. These are all interesting and useful, but why are there 2 and only 2 axes?

It's common to try to measure marketing ROI. And this works pretty well when tied to lead generating activities. But what about traditional marketing that doesn't seem to generate any leads?

For some, it's always seemed like "how things should be". But, it's certainly not a common approach. Indeed, for most people, marketing is just a department of people who generate "marketing materials", which are usually seen as hit-or-miss (mostly miss) pieces for sales people to use. Or, marketing can be the essentially fluffly and useful "mass" communication tools that no one reads. Either way, marketing is usually considered a necessary evil at best and expendable at worst. So, what do we do about this?

As we discussed last time, a new vendor is judged on quality and a current vendor is judged on service. Hence, the new vendor must stack his/her quality against the current vendor's quality. So, the new vendor must create a value proposition that not only shows the quality of the service. It must also undermine the service of the incumbent.