The Future of Marketing

  

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Occasionally we will repost blogs that we feel are outstanding.  The following is one of those, written by Dana VanDen Heuvel, founder of The Marketing Savant.   An award-winning marketing blogger, Dana is also the author of the American Marketing Association’s “Marketech Guide to Marketing Technology” and their “Guide to Social Network Marketing” and the creator of the AMA’s TechnoMarketing training series, Advanced Social Media training series and B2B Social Media training series.

The Future of Marketing is going to rely more heavily on online research and social media than has been done traditionally.  "Time" is becoming a precious commodity and marketing that is fast and hard-hitting is the type of marketing efforts we can expect to see in the future.  We hope you enjoy this article.

We’re All Marketers Now!

We’ve entered an era where customers no longer separate marketing from the online, in-store or face-to-face sales experience – it is the experience. In this era of engagement, marketing is the company and it’s far too important to be left to the marketing department. You’ve likely heard this before, but it’s never been so true, real, and in your face as it is today.

The Evolution of Engagement

Engagement has forever changed the buying experience to one where the marketer can ‘push’ their messaging to the marketplace to where the customer simply ‘pulls’ at will and engages in a collaborative (you’ve seen the commercials that tell you to “ask you friends on Facebook, right?) marketplace conversation before they show up at your door.

The problem with this is that customers can pull from anywhere and every touch point in the organization is vulnerable. Centralized marketing works great for push, in the old world where messaging was well controlled, but not so much now when every single touch point must scream “ideal brand experience!”

Marketing Pervades Everything

The pervasiveness of marketing is also reflected in the lack of linearity in the buying process. Customers can bounce from touch point to touch point and no longer can one function control just their own slice of the organization, rather, the entire company needs to pull together to build a compelling customer engagement model that’s consistent with the overall vision for the organization. In academic terms, it’s no longer corporate strategy, then marketing strategy but rather a blending of the two, to the point that the corporate strategy is inextricably linked to the marketing experience.

The Four Pillars of New Marketing

As pervasive as marketing as, as much as design matters and in spite of all the content that an organization can develop, there are still some structural fundamentals that need to change within the organization to capitalize on the future of marketing. The environment within the organization needs to match the mantra of “everyone as marketers.” These four pillars strike at the heart of effecting a positive environment for pervasive marketing.

Distribute Your Activities:Marketing should have dotted-line responsibilities within and across the organization. Embedded marketers in functions like sales, operations and customer service can adapt the corporate-level marketing programs to departmental or local situations.

Marketing Centers of Excellence and Partnerships:Smart marketers view partnering with customers in the form of customer advisory boards and bringing in vendors to share best practices both within the category and across the organization as essential their success. Leading companies also build marketing councils or centers of excellence with representation from across the enterprise.

Listening and Customer Insight as Strategic Functions:Listening to the market (social media, mass media, the press, customers…) used to be relegated to customer service and the PR function. In the future of marketing, listening is a 24/7 strategic activity powered by sophisticated tools and analysis allowing organizations to respond more quickly than ever before to the most minute change in the market.

Competing on Data and Insights:One of the fundamentals of integrated marketing communications is having a robust and accurate customer database. The next generation goes well beyond the database and into the era of ‘big data’ where we have customer insights that shape strategy at the highest levels, across the entire organization.

I’ll admit, these changes will not hit everyone like a wave, but rather, they will creep up on you gradually over time. But make no mistake, the structural change is forthcoming – organizations need to embrace the marketing revolution, take steps to connect the dots across the enterprise and embrace the coming changes that the new age customer demands.

We would welcome any comments you may have and we'll make sure that Dana receives them.