More Advice for Target

Robert Scoble noted in his blog yesterday that he was heading out to Target to discuss the blogosphere and asked people to offer free advice to Target. What a great way to engage consumers and develop a positive discussion focused on the Target brand.

Listening to differing opinions is the key to developing a great interactive discussion with consumers for a company with as diverse an audience as Target. Target, like many retailers and consumer-oriented companies, needs to have a voice that appeals to different age groups and different income levels.

Steve Rubel pointed out a number of great ideas for the retailer including RSS Coupons, developing local blogs for customer feedback and connecting their famous designers to consumers through the Target blog. Also recently, Jeremy Pepper at Pop! PR suggested that Target create a character blog for the Target dog. It could be a really tacky approach or a really funny one depending on your perspective. (or age) But it might just get people new to blogging to visit the Target blog just to interact with the dog.

If you take a close look at discussion on the blog sites about Target, you can see that there are many people, especially women, talking about how much they love Target, revealing new ways that Target can reach them through interactive marketing. Those women fall into many different categories including self-proclaimed ‘Target Queens’, young mothers, teenagers and women who practically describe themselves as home design addicts. There are critics as well, but many are offering great suggestions for new products to offer (body pillows) and customer service improvements (longer store hours).

The net-net is that Target should listen to their customers who are already very vocal in the blogosphere across a wide spectrum of passionate consumers. They love Target’s product offerings and designer fashions but some of the best-loved aspects of Target are the ones that enable people to connect with each other in traditional ways (great party supplies, invitations and cards) and those that enable everyone to feel good about themselves even though they spend more than at Target they ever intend to. Isn’t that a retailer’s dream? Maybe Target can find a way to offer theme-based blogs focused on parties, moving, shopping with kids, and all the other topics high on the interest list of their most passionate consumers. Creating an environment online where these dispersed yet passionate consumers can connect with each other could create a huge buzz on it's own just through word-of-mouth.