Change is constant; like change, customer preferences, biases, and beliefs change with situations, challenges, and age/ time. How things were done pre-2020 is not necessarily applicable today. The truth is that Marketing has a new set of rules and if marketers want to survive, they need to accept and adapt to the new Marketing Truths. Having said this, it is also important to describe the other side of this coin… which is that there are many businesses today, which in their journey of implementing modern marketing practices - have reduced the role of marketing to mere promotions; neglecting not just the importance of Strategy (because it is often seen as vague and intangible) but also the most elementary roles of a company’s product development, pricing strategy, product place, and distribution and advertising promotions. Gaps in both of these will most likely result in fragmented decision-making and suboptimal business performance. The fault finally lies with the role, purpose, and outcomes of marketing being delegated away from founders or senior leadership, who sometimes naively focus on short-term gains over long-term goals.
Additional Reading: Leveraging Activism for Loyalty, Creating Communities to drive purpose and growth, Marketing Truths in a World of Cynicism, Performance Marketing for Effectiveness, Packaging Designs that Sell, The Power of Music in Campaigns, Negotiation Strategies for any situation, Augmented Reality Marketing, How to Sell with Emotions, Crafting Your Customer Journey Map Masterpiece, Public Relations that Works, Immersive Customer Experiences with Experiential Marketing,
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THE NEW MARKETING TRUTHS
1. Marketing begins with knowing your customer segment, not just your customer.
Marketers realize that a broad-based understanding of customers is insufficient to build preference or make a sale. Communication needs to be made personal, relevant, and aligned to the individual’s situations, challenges, or values versus just the demographics and socio-economical classifications. The brand’s message must address multiple dimensions along the customer journey to influence a customer’s purchase behavior.
2. Brands compete with the last best experience their customer received, not with other brands.
Ok, just to be clear, we know that competitors exist for almost every business, product, or service (unless you’ve just invented the next best thing to ‘sliced bread’). But that’s not what we’re getting at. It is almost impossible for smaller brands to compete with big ones. Just like smaller marketing budgets can’t compete with big budgets. In these cases, what marketers should be focusing on is constantly and consciously building the customer brand experience. The better the personalized experience across the entire customer journey, the greater the likelihood of loyalty and advocacy.
3. Customers expect brands to know what they want, and then provide it.
Let’s face some facts; customers today are not only detached but concerned only with getting what they want when they want it. They expect their brand experience to be relevant, frictionless, anticipatory, and connected. So, they are most likely to allow brands to collect whatever data brands want, provided it helps them get what they want when they want it. So, implementing Technology, AI, etc. to build a better brand experience (be it via content, commerce, community, convenience, personalization, relevance, etc.) is today’s expectation.
4. Prospecting is speed dating online.
If prospecting was like dating, then Customers today don’t want to invest the time or make an effort to meet brands at a bar, at a party, or any traditional courting method. Spontaneity, serendipity, and face-to-face encounters offer too much of hit or miss; hence both brands and customers prefer to reduce the odds of chance in favor of data and algorithms. Today Performance Marketing, Email Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, and Brand Marketing are used in conjunction to drive awareness, preference, and sales. Customers need to be able to experience everything; personalized (even hyper-personalized) and then decide to become a brand advocate.
5. Customer Centricity is about having the customer at the heart of your customer journey (it is all about the experience).
Plans that are reliant on, or executed by, different departments most often result in multiple tiny gaps that conceal internal disconnects (for example - between marketing and sales; between sales and support; between customer service and call center representatives, etc.). Therefore even the most well-laid-out plans can deliver bad customer experiences. But, if all the teams within the organization were aware of the entire customer journey and not just their own output towards the plans, then these micro-fractures would be eliminated and customer centricity would truly be at the heart of the customer journey.
6. Customer Relationships are Everything.
For any relationship to exist, it prerequisites trust. Customers need to know that brands listen to their wants, needs, desires, and fears; basis that create products, services, or solutions that form the foundations for value exchange. For example, the customer provides brands with their data on the understanding that: (1) their data is safe and secure and (2) their data will be used to better improve their experience with the brand via personalization, communication, product development, etc.
7. Agility is a technology-infused marketing approach.
Campaign effectiveness, campaign creation, creativity, pivoting, budgeting, media, continuous customer listening, customer sentiments, demand generation, etc. all require real-time evaluation, execution, and implementation. Without agility and flexibility, brands will not only find themselves outmatched but also outperformed.
8. Brands are built on great values, not just products.
The marketing landscape has changed because customers have changed. Their mindsets, beliefs, value systems, and biases are driven by social awareness/ unrest, and activism. Price and convenience still matter but they are being coupled with sustainability, trust, ethical sourcing, social responsibility, etc. Sure, if your product or service is one of a kind/ next best thing to sliced bread, then yes, build your brand around the product. Else build it on great values. Either way, brands that have demonstrated a similar value system tend to do better than those which only have great products.
9. Marketing requires the right balance of all factors including technology.
The purpose behind technology adoption and implementation is to act as a facilitator and an enabler. It needs to enable humans to not just better understand data but also how to use it effectively, so that the right measurements are taken, the right decisions are made, and the right use cases are considered to drive the desired results. Technology (AI, Automation, Voice Search, etc.) on its own cannot accomplish that (at least not as yet). Marketers need to define the right balance of all factors, including technology, to achieve growth.
10. Marketing is at the center of a company’s growth agenda.
There still exist companies that believe that marketing is an expense center and is usually the first area to get cut during difficult times. However, the 2020 pandemic resulted in the accelerated adoption of digital transformation. C-suites quickly recognized that without marketing, customers not only forgot their products (and in some cases lived well without them too), but adopted other brands that provided them the values for which they were looking.
Additional Reading: Overcome the Generational barrier and Connect with Customers, Navigating Local Customs and Diverse Cultures, Leveraging Activism for Loyalty, Creating Communities to drive purpose and growth, Marketing Truths in a World of Cynicism, Performance Marketing for Effectiveness, Packaging Designs that Sell, The Power of Music in Campaigns, Negotiation Strategies for any situation, Augmented Reality Marketing, How to Sell with Emotions, Crafting Your Customer Journey Map Masterpiece, Public Relations that Works, Immersive Customer Experiences with Experiential Marketing,
11. Marketing is always a marathon, never a sprint.
Strong brands are adept at balancing short-term sales goals with long-term brand building. The long-term route cultivates a growing loyal customer base that buys more often and advocates for the brand. It taps into various human emotions like hope, joy, empathy, etc. to build memorability and create an impact. Marketing with Emotions ensures not only continued deep brand loyalty but also short-term conversions, and immediate engagement is achieved.
12. Effectiveness and Efficiency go hand in hand in marketing.
If efficiency is about doing things right, then effectiveness is about doing the right things. Efficiency involves the optimization of costs, time, and effort with metrics to evaluate CPL, CPA, Return on Investment, etc. It is short-term focused and sometimes neglects customer experience and market dynamics.
Effectiveness involves achieving goals and objectives and delivering outcomes with the metrics of market share, customer lifetime value, brand perceptions, etc. It is long-term focused, investing heavily in quality content and customer engagement, and leverages data, analytics, and storytelling to ensure sustainable relevance and competitive advantage. The key is to strike an acceptable balance so that marketing efforts are not just cost-effective but also impactful, and achieve long-term sustainable growth.
13. Creativity turbo-charges marketing impact, even in dull industries.
Features, benefits, and technical specifications are functional, rational, and therefore rarely required to capture the reader’s imagination. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Nobody ever bought dull, mundane, and boring in a world overwhelmed with information. Capturing customer attention is an art that weaves functional and rational messaging into stories that evoke emotions, fulfill dreams, and solve problems by breaking the clutter, and being engaging and unique.
14. Media is vast, dynamic, and unique, and requires a customized marketing strategy.
Media is dynamic and each platform continues to evolve rapidly, with its unique attributes and usage strategies. Marketers who implement an integrated media strategy that focuses on the unique strengths of each platform, prioritizing context and relevance in their communication and that is tailormade for each customer segment, are more likely to maximize effectiveness and achieve a multiplier effect across multiple media platforms and touch points in the marketing funnel.
15. Advertising and Marketing are NOT the same.
Advertising is limited to the activity of promoting solutions via media channels to a specific customer base. Marketing is identifying customer wants, needs, and desires and then creating value. It focuses on a long-term strategy to build positive perceptions in the minds of customers. Marketing taps into every aspect of the marketing funnel, not just promotions; furthermore it impacts every customer touch point. By investing in marketing, marketers stoke future demand, loyalty advocacy, and eventually business growth.
16. Marketing must have Truth and Authenticity.
Customers who feel a brand is truthful are more likely to develop loyalty and make repeat purchases. They tend to advocate for a brand that makes them feel valued and understood, and have a deeper meaningful connection. Authenticity and truthfulness elevate brands above their competition, build credibility and reliability, add substance to the business; it make the brand relatable to customers. Misleading claims, false advertising, and manipulative tactics may deliver short-term gains but will eventually harm a brand’s reputation and relationship.
Conclusion
The role of all Marketing is to reduce the friction between what companies have to sell and what consumers want to buy. Good Marketing Informs, Involves, Motivates, and Sells. The success of any business does not lie with technology or advertising budgets; it lies in the strength of its relationship with its customers and its continued commitment to keeping customers at the heart of its business. For brands to leap forward or stay ahead of their competitors they must understand and accept these new marketing truths. Marketers who do so can enhance their GTM strategies, and foster deeper, more meaningful customer connections.
Additional Reading: Leveraging Brand Communities, Defining an effective Buyers Journey, Storytelling that inspires, The Truth in Performance Marketing, Why customers love Experiential Marketing, AI tools for Business Growth, The real power of Public Relations, Creating Customer Journey Maps that drive results, Campaigns built on Selling Emotions, Augment Reality Marketing, Customer Centricity in Everything, Viral Marketing for Virality, Affiliate Marketing for new customer segments, A detailed guide into Influencer Marketing, Creative Copywriting for Impact, Drive OutComes not Output, Building Marketing Funnels the right way, Ethical Marketing for Trust and Authenticity, The new rules to Social Media Marketing, Paid Digital Media Marketing