It’s no surprise to anyone that the world and workplace are changing quickly. What used to be truly competitive barriers that made it nearly impossible for new market entrants to overcome are now status quo requirements. Two quick examples: Encyclopedias versus Wikipedia. Rand McNally Maps versus Google Maps. I’m sure you could name many more.
Consider the move from desktop to mobile that was thought to be a very distant possibility just three years ago. Today, more than half of all digital content published is consumed on mobile devices. That one dynamic is mindboggling if you think about its implications.
This speedup of technology has created an unfortunate mindset among marketing firms who feel the pressure to perform and brand owners who need to keep their revenues rising to lift their stock prices. The mindset is what we call ‘hurry-up strategy’ that is not well thought through or counseled by customers. If you’re like me, you read trade journals with an eye on strategy and brand and you notice there is a constant change and flux in the branding industry. The quick pace has placed demands for quick results and helps explain why so many marketing campaigns are uneventful or worse, fail. The reasonable and logical question to ask is, “What can we do to survive in this new marketplace?” Here is one suggestion to put your strategy into action.
Stop seeing the market as your marketing platform.
Instead of thinking about your marketing campaign, start thinking about your customer’s needs. Sure, this sounds elementary, and it is, but most brand owners who demand instant results from their marketing are typically in love with the next cool thing they can push out there.
The problem with this is legion, but the main problem is people today are mobile and go about their day (and night) with their mobile device to help them do whatever they want to do next. How well is your marketing strategy helping this person? Providing them with unwanted information isn’t helpful. It’s clutter. Have you ever tried to find a simple 800-telephone number on your smartphone with a vendor you constantly do business with? The fact that it takes more than one simple click means you don’t know who your customer is and what they want.
As new technology expands into many different areas such as wearable technologies, it will become that much more difficult for brand owners to maintain their close relationship with its customers. This places even more importance on knowing who your customers are and what they truly want. You can be sure that if you don’t give it to them your competitors will.