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In many ways, the current state of marketing can be viewed as both dark and bright at the same time — a yin/yang dichotomy where all forces have opposing but complimentary principles. The challenge for marketers is to make the most of the opportunities presented by the yang perspective of today’s marketplace. Consider the yin/yang dichotomy of three forces that are shaping the world of marketing today.
1. Increasing Marketing Complexity
The yin – Today, there are more customer channels and touch points to manage and keep in synch than ever before, making it difficult to manage the customer experience. Media communication channels have proliferated, fragmenting audiences and diminishing advertising efficiencies. Digital information is expanding at an unprecedented rate making it difficult to store and analyze relevant customer data. Many products and services have become commodities, making meaningful differentiation difficult if not impossible.
The yang – Because there are more channels, marketers can touch and interact with customers with greater frequency and intimacy. The emergence of new media forms and channels are providing marketers the opportunity for interactive dialogues with customers as well as improved measurements. In addition, these new digital media forms are providing marketers with volumes of customer data — and the potential for deeper customer insights and smarter decision making. As many products become commodities, marketers who learn how to differentiate the customer experience by managing the customer relationship on a 1-to-1 basis can create stronger, longer lasting customer bonds than their product-focused competitors.
The emergence of new interactive multimedia customer-engagement marketing strategies are creating new ways for customers to relate to brands. CMOs who recognize these opportunities and build marketing platforms that leverage new sources of customer information will be better positioned to make smarter investments and increase the probability of success.
2. Demand for Accountability
The yin – Marketers are feeling increased pressure from their CEOs, CFOs and shareholders for greater transparency and demonstrable marketing ROI. Marketers who cannot develop empirical evidence to justify marketing spend face shrinking budgets and diminished clout within the organization. As CEOs have seen the benefits of increased transparency and accountability in all other parts of the organization, there is a rising expectation that marketing will adopt the same rigor for two primary reasons:
_ The strategic importance of marketing’s role in developing a durable and profitable customer base — the lifeblood of a company.
_ The magnitude of the marketing budget — as much as 20 percent of revenues.
The yang – There are technologies today that enable marketers to not only make smarter financial decisions and better direct the investment of marketing dollars and sales capacity, but to also create and distribute better enterprise metrics that focus organizational activity around behaviors that improve customer value. Marketers can now use technology very differently. From the 1950s through the 1990s, technology led to improvements in the way we did business. Since then, the advancement and application of technology is leading to new ways of doing business. Marketing has the opportunity to be at the epicenter of this change.
3. Empowered Customers
The yin – Over the last decade, there has been a continuous power shift to customers. Today, consumers have more choices and more channels, available on demand, than ever before. Not only can they easily assemble knowledge to make more intelligent product comparisons and, ultimately, more intelligent purchases, but they can share their opinions and influence tens of millions of other consumers at the click of a mouse…at no personal expense. This consumer power can have a huge impact on the success of a company’s products and services and can even influence its market capitalization.
The yang – While the new rules of customer engagement bring a host of challenges, they also provide a wealth of opportunity. Every new communications form represents a free reservoir of marketing intelligence to companies. Perhaps more importantly, they provide companies with an opportunity to engage customers through a range of new mediums such as blogs, Web sites, social networks and even interactive games. The fact is that technology now enables companies to involve customers more deeply in their brands and, in some cases, create cult-like affinity groups which can drive brand loyalty.
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