San Jose: Micro-Channels

If Northern Michigan is vacation country, San Jose is, well, something very different.

In a world where folks invent social media applications faster than folks microwave popcorn, traditional marketing may well be dead to many.

So if we want to engage these folks, we need to be something more than a remail of a 124 page Holiday catalog offering $14.95 shipping and handling.

This is where you get to test your micro-channel mettle. E-mail, paid search, affiliate marketing, shopping comparison marketing, social media, the whole nine yards apply here. Customer acquisition is less about pushing a message, more about pulling folks in to the experience.

During the past few decades, some folks advocated that there should be segment managers, responsible for increasing share of wallet among various segments of customers. Here's a segment of customers where the theory may have potential.