Marketing: No Longer Business as Usual

Originally posted on RBM BLOG

We are all aware of the disruption to the marketing status quo.

The question is how do we thrive in this new paradigm where the consumer is queen, and their data is the throne?

Marketing professionals were trained on the sales funnel concept that emerged when a lead became a customer. The ROI was conversion resulting in a sale; and traditional marketing tactics focused on generating high volumes of leads that led to increased sales. But the funnel has changed.

Check out the customer hourglass conceived by Jeremiah and the Altimeter team which visualizes the entire customer experience. It no longer stops at the sale, but extends to support, loyalty, advocacy, and product innovation. This is a dramatic change and marketing professionals need to rethink their approach to programs and campaigns.

Building relationships with customers extends far beyond the point of sale. There is an increased challenge for companies to deliver on the promise of the brand in every interaction with their customer. According to Kyle Lacy in his excellent blog post, “5 steps for turning customers into brand advocates”,“in this new model we want to focus on the who, not the how many.”

Basically, it is no longer enough to simply gather data on a customer’s actions of purchase and share; we need to extend our intelligence on customers to understand exactly what is driving them, the need that we are solving, and the reason they want to buy the product. And most importantly, would they recommend this product to a friend? To transform consumers into advocates for brands, we need to have a much deeper understanding of what motivates them, and identify what makes them passionate.

This means gathering more data, in more places, and more frequently. Most companies are simply not structured to operate this way, and in many cases the data on customers resides in in siloed departments throughout the company. This increases the need for internal collaboration and communication.

For marketing professionals to truly thrive utilizing a customer hourglass, they need to change the way in which they work, and the manner in which they approach marketing.

— Kirstin

Relationships vs. Leads

Here’s an idea: stop looking at your potential customers as leads, and stop implementing tactics to acquire them. Instead, shift your goal to building long-term relationships with them, creating experiences that engage them, and transforming them into advocates for your brand.

Of course, this is much harder because you need to do more than make sales calls. Your operation, brand, and product all need to be focused on meeting the needs of your potential customer and building authentic relationships.

This doesn’t mean adding names to an email list, sending a mass sales pitch email and being happy that you got a 1% response rate. I understand why people continue to do this even when they know it doesn’t work…it allows them to take immediate action, feel like they are doing something. Think about how many emails that you already don’t read from organizations that you know…and then imagine why someone would read an email from someone that they don’t know and isn’t personalized in any way to address their needs.

A better way to spend time and energy is to learn the motivation and values of your potential customers and find out where they are already congregating, what they are reading, and what they are doing. The deeper you get to know their challenges, the more effective you can be in solving them. Successful relationships are based on the interaction and connection between people. Think about how you want to be treated, and build that into your operation and product.

–Kirstin