We are in the Midst of a Marketing Revolution

We are in the midst of a marketing revolution. Every indication in the marketplace in regard to how people receive, accumulate, disseminate, and deliver information brings me to only a singular conclusion – we are in the midst of a communications revolution, and therefore, a marketing revolution. Allow me to crystallize my thoughts in regard to how your company’s marketing strategy should move forward in the future.

This revolution is marked by five irreversible trends:

• Mobile Computing as the most used source for the exchange of information

• Social Media and Social Intelligence

• Social Networking

• Target Segmentation

• Expected User Experience

There are several obstacles to addressing these trends:

• Gauging our individual preferences as a barometer on how to go to market

• Establishing a process to measure the outcome of new marketing communications vehicles

• Acquiring the appropriate information and developing the appropriate analytics

• Establishing anticipated outcomes and accountability

• Letting go of the past

What does this mean for your Company?

Your Company has done and is doing a lot of things ‘right’ and may be ahead of most of its traditional competitors and partners in its approach to marketing. However, Your Company is also competing for mindshare in this new world of communications with every company in every industry. Whether one sells mobile phones, clothes, food and drink, match-making services, or information technology solutions – the first organizations to seize the opportunity to exploit these marketing vehicles will be far ahead of all other organizations.

Passion is no substitute for planning. I suggest you use the same process in selecting what Your Company should do to change its internal culture.

1. Identify what is easy to do with high impact; easy to do with lesser impact; what is hard to do with high impact; what is hard to do with lesser impact.

2. Prioritize these tasks and begin developing strategies.

3. Measure your progress over the course of the next year.

I have spent the greater part of the past ten years. This new marketing revolution has more to do with “how” we market than what we market.

Key initiatives should focus on the answer to questions of, “who are we targeting and what problems are we solving,” the types of initiatives about which people want information. These initiatives boil down to “What does it mean to your customers/prospects if ...

Marketing and Communication

The key for Your Company is to understand how people think and communicate. Mobile Integrated Computing – Social Networking has surpassed email as a vehicle for people to retrieve and send information. We are seeing with Social Intelligence – a velocity of feedback on ideas. And today, Your Company is behind the curve in taking advantage of this phenomenon.

What do customers expect today in how Your Company (anyone) communicates with them?

Customers want to get information in real time. Customers want us to interface with them with their familiar experience. This may impact Your Company in a variety of ways – beyond marketing. It impacts how Your Company gathers information, how we process that information, format that information, and deliver it back to the customer. It also impacts the speed at which we conduct this process. Understanding this concept drives home Your Company’s need to capture information and place it in a collaborative format. It emphasizes our need to move quickly to integrate the tools and establish accountability amongst our management team to ensure all of resources ‘buy-in’ and follow Your Company’s methodology in gathering, processing, formatting, and delivering information to our customers, employees, and partners.

As smartphones and other internet-connected devices have become more widespread, 31% of U.S. adults now report that they go online “almost constantly,” up from 21% in 2015, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, 2021.

Overall, 85% of Americans say they go online on a daily basis. That figure includes the 31% who report going online almost constantly, as well as 48% who say they go online several times a day and 6% who go online about once a day. Adults under the age of 50 are at the vanguard of the constantly connected: 44% of 18- to 49-year-olds say they go online almost constantly. By comparison, just 22% of those ages 50 to 64 and even smaller shares of those 65 and older (8%) say they use the internet at this frequency.

Who is your customer/prospect? Have you rebuilt your marketing communications efforts with the changes in how people receive information in mind?

Recommendation. One of the first tasks to undertake is that Your Company needs to establish a series of communities. I suggest these first communities be established internally at Your Company (to build a culture of collaboration) – Sales, Solution Architects, Engineer, Operations, Accounting, etc. These communities should be set up using Social Media vehicles from Facebook to LinkedIn. For example, Your Company sales resources can share wins, share customer and solution challenges, solutions to those challenges, information, blogs, etc. And Your Company sales can open this community to everyone at Your Company. Who knows from where the next good idea may come?

In this way Your Company can begin to build an ‘experience’ that we can later translate into a customer experience. After we work out the kinks, we can build the same type of communities for Your Company’s customers using Social Media vehicles.

Does your Company have a video strategy as a marketing vehicle and apply those links to your Social Media communities (and do the same with Twitter – Did you know that someone who follows us on Twitter is two to six times more likely to buy from us?

Challenge. Your Company will need the tools and ‘know-how’ to capture this information and analyze what it means. In a short time, Your Company can build an analytics engine that will make its marketing and sales efforts far more effective.

New Concepts

The work of I have done over the past six weeks has spurred a new set of innovative marketing concepts that I am ‘chomping at the bit’ to try. I believe Your Company should continue its mission of educating, evangelizing and exciting its customers, prospects, partners, and employees. The Company should continue to host seminars and webinars; put out its newsletters; and provide information to our customers. I am suggesting that Your Company must expand our horizons in how we engage people.

Establish a Brown Paper Wall (using Sharpies) strategy – both real and virtual. Basically, it is a wall with a topic on which you post your thoughts.

I am sure you can see where I am going with these concepts and believe this is the tip of the iceberg. The ‘hard costs’ of this type of marketing is minimal. The costs and challenges revolve around your ability to secure the right tools and the right people to execute these kinds of programs is the real challenge/cost. The key is careful planning.