Of a Marketing Masterclass

I attended a Grant Leboff seminar yesterday in Kensington London. Boy was he good. One of his pearls of wisdom is to share as much as you can. So now that I'm a Leboff follower here's what I took from the masterclass. Here's my sharing  :
* Marketing is about getting attention nowadays - we spend much of our day screening due to amount of choice. Familiarity breeds success not contempt.

* The battle in marketing now is for attention and to engaged customers
* What we must ask is are we montarising the right thing? Convenience, security etc are commodities we will pay for. He gave example of the music industry. Madonna could give her next album  out for free. But we would pay perhaps £2 to receive it a month before anyone else. We might buy a bonus track. We might go to her exclusive "webcast" and buy a t-shirt that says we were there etc
* HE ARGUES the growth of the world wide web has led us to a long term customer engagement model
* In order to engage people our marketing has to provide VALUE. VALUE he  argues is not produced through a company's products or services. Rather it is created by relating a business's offering to what the customer is looking to achieve.

* Social media 3 questions 1. Where is the value?, 2, Why would people share it? 3. How will they share it?
* Marketing is no longer about brand and image but the reputation a company earns (what others say). Today, everyone is a marketeer. More marketing messages are created by the public than by marketing departments
* The co-founder of Facebook says we have moved from "The Wisdom of Crowds" to the "Wisdom of Friends"
* The power of marketing today is that others will market for you but companies must Listen, Monitor, Identify Influencers use Radian6 to monitor online profile and that of competitors.
* Leboff argues there's no such thing as a unique selling proposition and I think he's right. We must talk about special differentiators  

* For most purchases you have both practical and emotional stuff going on. IF YOU UNDERSTAND the problems your customers have you begin to understand why customers buy from you. 
* It's essential to work out when people buy as well as why - you can change your web site accordingly. E.g nightclub Friday night front page should contain voucher to show on mobile for free drink. Monday morning it should show normal corporate site.
* Marketing/Information Stickiness for customer engagement should go for :
- Facts - go for interesting facts famous one is "Ten things you didn't know about last week"  combined relevance is good e.g What Xfactor can teach lawyers, What olympians can teach businessmen.