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Walking the Interactive Walk
Our Inside 1to1 lead story this week addresses an issue that has puzzled even the brightest marketers. That issue: How do I move my money where the customers are? Companies who aspire to spend their branding millions more effciently need to stop theorizing about the percentage of their total budgets they will put online, or how much they're not going to spend on TV this year. The debate needs to turn toward how money will be spent in below the line marketing activites, not how much could be spent. Companies have been given the keys to reaching customers where they research, make and execute purchase decisions. Reaching them during decision mode has opened up interactive, experiential and word-of-mouth marketing. This week's 1to1 story shows how some companies have stopped talking about this path and started walking it. Funny how success in customer acquisition and loyalty seems to be following them around.
My comment, "The old dog made up a new marketing trick. But will it work? A big question mark." To me, "a consolidated customer experience management" is quite a foggy structural concept, especially when projecting it to a segment level. I think that's exactly the point where your consolidated effort will end up in a marginalized trap leading to excessive overheads. It may sound rosy to a CRM consultant but operationally you'll get a lot of duplication in the end when you try to build the marketing function around each segment.
I'm a strong proponent of the three-tier organizational structure on a macro level: (1) a product - (2) operationalizing the product - (3) some core active marketing (brand management & CRM). Within it, you're building your business engine in a way to create a brand that ultimately captures its fair share of customers. If you deliver relevantly and consistently over the time, the customers will be around your brand, not other way. If the customers found themselves at bay with a brand, chances are they will stay on for a long, long, long time. A great deal of customers are tranquilized that way with MS Windows or BMW 3 series. And I don't see it comes to an end in the foreseeable future.
Frankly, I view the sentiments like "it's because of customers" is a kind of overstretch. Sure, a customer is an asset, no question about that. But should a customer drive solely the whole organization? Hardly.
The basic assumption is that customers are dependent on their trivial needs or the needs somebody else created for them like computing, wireless phone calling they never heard before.
Under the concept, you first offer the product that support the trivial need or pump up the new invented need. Then comes the product operationalization, filling in all the business functions and processes when putting it on the counter. Operationalization may harbour many functions including those allegedly assigned to 4P's like pricing and logistics - who says that modern logistics is an inevitable part of marketing or accountants can count worse than marketing people? Marketing should get a fair and intelligent makeover being consistent with the value it drives, the brand power and customer relationships. Forget about those old-hat 4P's that clash marketing with operations and only get people confused. The job of new reinvented marketing is to roar about the product, find the way to build a sticky brand and tie up the customers around in a good CRM fashion. Simple? No, tough.