Since the ancient bazaars in Athens and Rome, marketing has created or increased demand for what is offered, whatever that may be. In recent years, many of the transactions have been conducted electronically, online. Almost 40% of the world is connected and that percentage is certain to increase. My point is, almost all of us are involved in some form of marketing each day, wherever we may be, attempting to attract interest in what we offer or evaluating what is offered to us.
That said, the Internet and especially the WWW have created entirely new opportunities and (yes) perils for marketing initiatives. According to Larry Weber and Lisa Leslie Henderson, “Digital has dealt all of us new cards. Today’s customer journey still starts with a need or a desire, but our prospects often undertake an at times lengthy period of silent due diligence during which time they discover and evaluate their options via the web. During this period of discovery our prospects’ consideration set often grows rather narrow.”
On average, people pull information from 10.4 sources before making a purchase. There has obviously been a shift from provision of information (e.g. functions, features, benefits) to “creating useful resources that address our prospects’ and customers’ underlying needs and desires. If these experiences resonate, we may be invited into the purchase decision process [as consultants, not purveyors]. Serving as trusted advisors, rather than biased advocates for our company’s products and services, we create the conditions for our prospects and customers to evaluate for themselves whether we make the grade.”
Weber and Henderson offer ten new skills marketers must learn to stay relevant and customer-centric:
1. Build a successful marketing career
2. Design valuable customer experiences
3. Find actionable insights in Big Data and marketing analytics
4. Employ entrepreneurial thinking for discernment and agility
5. Create a content experience strategy that delivers
6. Engage employees via social communities
7. Maximize marketing impact with converged media
8. Drive sales with marketing automation
9. Craft worthwhile loyalty and digital couponing programs
10. Ignite customer-centricity everywhere
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They explain how and why to achieve these strategic objectives, devoting a separate chapter to each in The Digital Marketer: Ten New Skills You Must Learn to Stay Relevant and Customer-Centric, published by Wiley (April 2014).
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Larry Weber is the Chairman & CEO of Racepoint Global, an advanced marketing services agency, well-known expert in PR and marketing services, and author. Passionate about the convergence of technology and communications, he is a frequent public speaker on the future of marketing, the social web and building communities online. Larry enjoys helping global brands and emerging companies harness social media strategies to enhance brand reputation, create and extend partnerships, and increase demand generation. He founded one of the industry’s first interactive marketing agencies, Thunderhouse, and has worked with world-class clients including ARM, AT&T, Coca-Cola, Cook Medical, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, and many more.
An observer, synthesizer, and connector by nature, Lisa Leslie Henderson writes about the changing face of marketing, social entrepreneurship, and creative thinking. The daughter of an artist and an inner-city social entrepreneur, she comes by her interest in creativity and innovation honestly. Fascinated by the intersection and reassembly of ideas, she completed an interdisciplinary major at Stanford, before working on the developing a new market for JP Morgan and a ground-breaking social investment fund for a micro-finance organization. After business school she founded a company to help organizations create relevant and engaging content in the emerging conversation-based economy.