Customer; King indeed.
Howdy.
It's stale new, marketing budgets are shrinking across industries.
72% of marketers in the Gartner's annual CMO Spend Survey report that they are spending more on innovation marketing and hence less on traditional means of communicating with consumers.
Of course, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
Albert Einstein drove the point home further, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
Sure.
That said, three factors are shifting marketing methods - explosion of product choices, proliferation of digital channels and most importantly the emergence of the intelligent consumers.
Consumers, these days, are research-savvy, Google-companions, arming themselves with sufficient information before they appear in your store or sales outlet.
Perhaps, l should illustrate this with the healthcare sector. Imagine you have a nagging headache that has persisted for a week or longer.
My guess is, you would likely type in Google's search engine, "What is the cause of persistent headache" and get results such as Mayo Clinic, WebMD, Cleveland Clinic etc. Then, you click on, say, Mayo Clinic and gulp every piece of information. Right?
Trust me, when you appear before your physician, you are asking her questions based on the new information you have about the ailment (this is the opposite of what used to happen when the doctor was in the driving seat, when the internet was no this popular).
As it is in healthcare, so it is across all industries globally - telecommunications, consumer goods, real estate, fintech etc. To be sure, the communication is no longer a monologue, communication is now two-way street.
The corollary is that consumers across all industries are in the driving seat.
It is a buyer's world.
Research shows that about two-thirds of the touchpoints along the consumer journey are dominated by consumer-driven marketing in terms of internet reviews (this is common in industries like travels and hospitality, personal computing, fashion, banking, e-commerce etc), word of mouth recommendations of families and friends, and past experiences with brands.
To put this in perspective, it is common for automobile brands to use strong sales incentives and in-dealer loyalty programs to entice potential buyers and drive sales. That is, these automakers focused marketing and sales dollars at the actual purchase stage of the customer journey.
But like David squared against Goliath, Asian automobile brands know where the real marketing trigger is. They work hard to create cars that aim to delight the consumers with solid value propositions such as fuel efficiency, minimal repair cost, and good second hand value etc.
Hence, the post purchase experience customers have with the brand fuels positive word of mouth and favourable reviews which increase their fighting chance of making the initial consideration list.
This is a virtuous cycle Asian brands like Toyota have capitalized on for decades which the generous of the competitors cannot hold a candle to.
In sum, marketing and messaging should be aimed at touchpoints where the consumers can be mostly influenced by them. It is the precursor to value capture and hence revenue generation.
My last line.
To get the best from your marketing spend, first, you need to understand how they make decisions and then spend the most on the most influential touchpoints. Second, align your overall marketing universe - strategy, planning, product development, etc. with the customer decision journey. It is the wise thing to do in a world where customers are king indeed.
Catch up with you tomorrow.
Until then, keep winning.
Oyeniyi Faleye