16 Jan The one place ALL customers come
Marketing is changing at a faster rate than it ever has before. Yet marketing practitioners simply aren’t evolving at the same pace. In the analogue age, marketers researched where lots of people congregate (TV, sport, music), sized them, profiled them and then ‘matched’ segments versus their own customer groups.
Today, the notion of interrupting a large group of anonymous people, in a faraway place, with a story YOU are passionate about, in the hope that some of them might listen, seems antiquated. It is the equivalent of English football fans gatecrashing a classical music concert and singing their club chants at the audience. “You weren’t invited, you are noisy, none of us understand a word you are saying, you don’t belong here and we’re not interested!”
Of course I am exaggerating to make a point. But the world has changed so much since the days of exposure-based marketing.
- Why put all your effort into finding people who are furthest away from your business when you have passionate supporters already?
- Why ‘find and match’ audiences when data allows you to map journeys of your actual customer groups wherever they may be?
- Why intrude when you can be invited?
- Why shout your story at people when you can get your customers to tell it for you?
- Why assume value has to be price discounting when it is more powerful as something your customers crave?
The one place ALL customers come is your owned asset base. They come to research your offer at your website, they gauge ‘lifestyle fit’ at your store, they gauge ‘belief fit’ at your social channels, they listen to your customer’s view and they build a relationship with you via the phone, email, webchat and your staff. So surely this is where you should be investing the majority of your efforts?
Marketing in 2017 involves investing time in understanding your customer’s value exchange, using data to drive marketing decisions, creating experiences worth sharing, building enduring relationships and offering an authentic, differentiated and magnetic story.
You already have Mecca and it’s your owned assets.