The Rise of the Marketer: Driving Engagement, Experience & Revenue

Editor's Notes

1. All marketers, irrespective of the type of company they work for - B2B and others from B2C businesses, across industries and verticals, have the same quest: How do I acquire new customers faster? How do I grow their lifetime value? And, how do I convert as many of them as possible to become advocates? How do I build brand advocates who in turn can influence new prospects? In other words, create this unstoppable virtuous cycle of customer success.
2. But today’s mobile, social, digital world, has made this really hard to create this virtuous cycle of customer success. How many of you checked your email this morning? Ok, and how many of you remember any of the exact offers that were in your email? And that’s just email! If you watched TV this morning, or passed a billboard, or listened to the radio… you know what I’m getting at. There’s lots of noise out there – buyers of today – its not easy for them either – they are being bombarded by more than 2900 messages per day; they can recognize about 50 and remember maybe 4.
3. But this noise has also created a world of information abundance – when they’re engaging, buyers are more empowered than ever before. And armed with this info, they are forming opinions and drawing conclusions well before they choose to interact with your brand. In fact if you look at some data points, from folks like Forrester, they say that anywhere from 66-90% of a buyer’s journey is self-directed before they interact with you
4. Let take an example of buying a car. Just ten years ago, if you bought a car, the you would’ve seen a lot more black than purple on this slide – sellers has all the power. Today, the information abundance has empowered the buyers and made them self-direct their journeys more than ever before.
5. And when these buyers do decide to interact with the brand, at every stage of interaction, 87% percent of them demand something that is a meaningful, contextual, relevant experience (based on a recent report from Edelman). Its like going back in time … If we transport back in time…100 years ago. A time where business used to be personal – you went to your local store. Like this place…where you had a relationship with Paul, a store owner in East Rutherford, N.J……And Paul knew your name He knew what you purchased in the past and and he could anticipate your needs and wants. That type of personalized service was great…the only challenge was…it didn’t scale. This is the same experience that people want in their digital interactions with brands today…
6. But, today’s mobile, social, digital world has made this really hard to create this virtuous cycle of customer success. First of all, your buyers are more empowered than ever before. They have 2900 messages per day that are vying for their attention so there is are lots of places that they can get information. And armed with this info, they are forming opinions and drawing conclusions well before they choose to interact with your brand. In fact if you look at some data points, from folks like Forrester, they say that anywhere from 66-90% of a buyers journey is self-directed before they interact with you. When they are interacting with your brand, at every stage of interaction, 87% percent of them demand something that is a meaningful, contextual, relevant experience (based on a recent report from Edelman). Given that there is lots of noise, the customer is self-directing their journey and the customer wants a personal interaction at every point of their journey, it’s now up to marketing, more than any other business function, to become the steward of the customer journey. In the past, sales was empowered and customer service interacted with the customers a lot, but given these trends, marketing is taking the lead, building a bond with customers and becoming the steward of the customer journey. Visual Note: Chevron and movement. Engagement Marketing bigger.
7. Given that there is lots of noise, the customer is self-directing their journey and the customer wants a personal interaction at every point of their journey, it’s now up to marketing, more than any other business function, to become the steward of the customer journey.
8. This isn’t just my opinion – this is a worldview that the leading minds in marketing, like Gartner, are coalescing around. In the past, sales was empowered and customer service interacted with the customers a lot, but given these trends, marketing is taking the lead, building a bond with customers and becoming the steward of the customer journey
9. For marketing to deliver exceptional brand moments, the rules of engagement have to change; we can’t parlay the paradigms of the past but rather need new ones. So, what are these new rules of engagement?
10. As marketers shift from talking at people, and focusing on transactions, to engaging with people – to build meaningful, life-long, and personalized relationships. We call this engagement marketing. Engagement marketing is about creating meaningful interactions with your customers, based on who they are and what they do, continuously over time. It’s marketing that engages people towards a goal, wherever your customers are. It’s marketing that is backed by both creative vision and hard data. Finally, it’s marketing that allows you to move quickly, shortening the time between idea and outcome, so that you can create more – and better targeted – programs.
11. Rule #1: Marketers need to shift from mass marketing to engaging people an individuals, in a 1:1 way. We used to live in the era of mass marketing – creating single messages designed to appeal to everyone, and focused on talking at customers via advertising. Then the internet introduced transactional marketing – during which the emphasis was on the “click,” or the point of interaction, and the entire goal was to win the transaction upfront. But today’s digital world has shown us that the “click” is only the beginning of a customer relationship, not the end. Amazon.com,
12. Take this down to the B2B level – tactically: NICE systems
13. New Rule #3 is that marketers need to shift from point in time campaigns to continuous conversations. One-off campaigns are disconnected puzzle pieces – and therefore never form any kind of cohesive thread or picture – that form a continuous relationship that gets deeper and deeper over time. A page in a book. You want the entire book. Nike/Adidas shoes example Bar example Marriage example Traditionally as marketers, we’ve been focused a lot on the transaction – helping close the deal with the customer. But the end of the transaction is the beginning of a long-term relationship with a customer. And brands that win engage people early and engage them over time continously in a personalized way; this is critical in a world where a customer has lots of choice and the switching costs are low.
14. Rule #4: Marketing is an outcome. If a curious buyer visits you at a tradeshow, your call-to-action might be to show a product demo; if a new customer visits your website, your goal might be to guide them toward your help resources. Existing customers should be shown new products. long-time customers should be encouraged to become advocates for your brand. No matter where someone in in the customer lifecycle, your goal should be to move him one step further along. Whenever you communicate with your buyers, keep the customer journey in mind. Engagement marketing isn’t about relationship-building for its own sake – it’s about relationship-building toward a goal. At each phase of the buyer’s journey – from acquisition to advocacy – your goal is to move those buyers into the next phase. And to do so, you need a clear understanding of that journey, and a clear call-to-action in all of your marketing.
15. New Rule #5 – engage people everywhere they are. Used to be that, as marketers, we had to deal with 1-2 channels. Now our prospects and customers are everywhere – 36% of us companies have people interacting with them in 3 or more channels. And they demand a consistent experience across these channels. And we marketers need to graduate from siloed communications to integrated, multi-channel engagement that actually shows someone that you know who they are and that you are listening to them The Economist on the train on my cell phone.
16. Visit the Marketo expo hall to learn more about Engagement Marketing.