000

In today’s word, the ability to engage your target buyers and meet their expectations is a tough job. With a plethora of media channels, savvy audiences are disengaging from your marketing efforts.

• More than 65% of the 900 million telecom subscribers in India are on the national DND (Do Not Disturb) Registry
• People don’t pay attention or fast forward through TV commercials
• Most delete email advertisements automatically or mark your mail as spam
• Direct mails never get opened,
• 60% are likely to abandon your website with excessive advertising etc.

You are trying to figure out why customers leave you when you have hardly any negative reviews or formal complaints registered. The advent of the new age buyer is here, and their numbers are growing.

Now that we are approximately a decade and a half of the 21st century, is your marketing team geared to handle this ‘’new age buyer’’, as their numbers are on the rise?

What is the new way marketing compared to the old traditional way? The post highlights 5 main points of differentiation to reassess marketing strategies and align with the company goals to keep up with changing times. It’s all about: what can we control these days, what can’t we and what can we influence?

1. In the recent 10+ years, there has been a rapid rate of change in the way you engage with your target audience

Today it’s all about answering your customer’s question – WIIFM – What’s in it for me? If they are convinced with your response, you grab their attention. Else they explore other alternatives or postpone the purchase as they don’t want to pay for bad service or products.

Old way marketing

You try to gain awareness and attract a larger audience by pitching your product features and benefits at the top of the funnel (TOFU) and hope for engagement at all stages of the buying process.

New way marketing

You engage with your customers with a goal in mind, whether it’s creating awareness for your product, increase sales, nurturing loyalty, or seeking feedback to improve your product. Although communication with your target audience is an on-going dialogue, you don’t chat just for the sake of it. You try and maintain an optimal level of engagement and focus on building relationships, and along the journey share your expertise, ways you address their pain or how can you help them do better. You save the sales pitch for the bottom of the funnel (BOFU).

2. A go-to-market strategy

An effective go-to-market strategy to deliver the product to the market is based on how you surprise your competitors, engage with potential customers and communicate your unique value, develop relationships and delight them by fulfilling your brand promise.

In many cases, there is a massive misalignment between how the firm wants to go-to-market and how the buyer intends to buy in the digital age.

Old way marketing

In most traditional businesses, acquiring clients is accomplished primarily with a direct sales team or channel partner network. Sales people engage one-to-one with prospective customers and rely on their charm, wit, and product know-how to close the deal. Often, when they don’t smell any recurring business, to meet their targets more than 70% end up ignoring existing clients.

A direct sales force is critical for BOFU action. However, the sales process is not aligned with the buying process in the digital age; they end up being expensive and inefficient.

New way marketing

Today’s buyers often make up their minds before ever reaching out to a sales person.  So similar to a dining experience where your meal begins with an appetizer, followed by the main course and finally dessert, your lead attraction and nurturing efforts should be well thought-out to ensure you’re cooking and dishing up the relevant content for every buying phase.

In the TOFU stage, your goal is to provide buyers with enough content to self- educate and find answers to a particular need or pain point, but without a sales pitch. In the MOFU stage (Middle of the Funnel), you not just educate them but start building your credibility and the process of positioning your company as the best fit to meet their needs and challenges. At the BOFU stage (Bottom of the funnel) your sales steps in and engages one-on-one to win the business. Post sales marketing steps, to free sales team to maintain the relationship with the customer.

Establishing a frequency for engaging with prospects and clients creates TOMA (top of mind awareness), credibility and a feeling of reciprocity that help rocket your business to the top. They don’t feel rushed or hustled by you.

3. Focus on customer experience

Customer experience is almost a cliché among most companies. Though, most companies are aware of the importance of customer experiences to build loyalty and retain customers.

Old way marketing

“Customer experience” in the past meant customer relationship management (CRM) often using a technology tool to figure out if your customers (or prospective customers) value your product or service and might want to buy. Though quite a few companies invest in “Voice of Customer” surveys, it’s often a tick mark in the annual “To-Do List”. It’s like listening with one ear and taking no action, as it often lacks executive support to drive the desired change and employees not motivated to be customer-focused.

New way marketing

In the new-age, it’s all about 360-degree listening of the buyer personas along their buying journey. The focus is to understand what they want and how do they feel about the interactions with your brand across different touchpoints. As the target audience decides if, when and how to communicate, your need to focus on making the interactions and conversations across different channels, highly accessible, easy and natural.

As your customers now have the control, your job is to take care to ensure they can communicate with you: Are their questions getting answered on-time? Are they satisfied with the response/resolution? Are they posting a grievance or do they want to give a rave review? What is their payment preference? Are they experiencing a technical difficulty? How can they refer their friends and family to avail your services?

But to be known for providing an excellent customer experience, your employees, partners need to believe in your company’s goals. You need to make sure you hear employee’s voice and give them the freedom to help and solve problems.

4. Marketing viewed as a service center

For many companies, marketing equals to a logo, a brochure, a powerpoint presentation, creating and placing ads, updating the static website, setting up trade events, etc.  Companies stuck with this understating have to change their mindset to take advantage of the opportunity that’s knocking their door.

Old way marketing

Marketing rarely participates in business decisions and the focus in on corporate communications.

New way marketing

The marketing team has a seat at the leadership table and plays a significant role in lead generation. You have to stay on track with customer data, make sense of this knowledge to devise successful campaigns. You offer guidance by understanding market needs, competitive analysis, positioning, designing the customer experiences across different touchpoints, craft compelling messaging, return on investment and more.

5. The sales, product and marketing silos

The sales, product, and marketing silos are prevalent in many organizations.

Old way marketing

Marketing, product, and sales are not aligned and do not understand each other, resulting in a lot of finger pointing with unrealized organization goals.

New way marketing

There is only one team responsible for meeting the revenue goals and rolling out a strategic plan. Each actor in the team understands the goals, desires, objectives, challenges and opportunities.  Break this silo

The “new ways of marketing” provide ample possibilities for a business that wants to grow and build a sustainable business. It’s not a smooth journey, but it is well worth it! So figure out what suits your organization?

The article was first posted in Yourstory.

Innovatus Marketers Touchpoint LLP is a customer experience, marketing, service design, design thinking and business innovation consulting firm, based in India. We offer go-to-market and digital strategy consulting and help our clients rethink and redesign customer and employee value in the digital era. We offer design thinking workshops and consulting, tailored to enable, accelarete or transform your business. We are laser-focused on the problem at hand and your opportunity space, and optimize process to make design thinking and service design principles accessible to your employees who’ve never done it before or stuck-up, and provide “just adequate” theory to help you get moving and achieve outcomes.

You may reach out to Vidya Priya Rao @ +918080015500 or email @ vidyapriya.rao@marketerstouchpoint.com

Sign Up to receive latest posts in the area of customer experience, marketing, design thinking and strategy.