InsightIQ Blog

Let's Get Engaged!

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Mar 11 2010

Many of the senior marketers I talk with are worried because they feel like they are losing control over their customers. They are right to be worried; but let's be clear, the "control" they felt they possessed was largely an illusion. Consumers of the past essentially were sitting targets for a brand's outbound communications, but that situation has changed dramatically.

Technology, once again, has been the catalyst for this disruption of the traditional marketing model. Thanks to recent advances, there are now myriad ways for consumers to find information and connect with each other, either through online research or via social media. Those changes mean that consumers can be your brand evangelists (sending people streaming to your site/store to purchase) or frankly, your worst nightmare, when you have to respond to a reputation crisis. Witness what is going on with Toyota at the moment! Of most concern to the marketers is that these discussions can now happen without ever involving them. They, in effect, have become the sitting targets for what consumers now decide!

This is the new reality and marketers, to paraphase a well know business book from a couple of years ago, can either obsess about "who moved their cheese", or they can think of how to use technology and data in much more creative ways to engage consumers when and where it is meaningul to them.

But how do you define engagement  and more importantly, how do you make it happen? I like to think about it in terms of some practical steps that marketers can take to respond to evolving consumer behavior and preferences:

From                                                    To

Outbound broadcast messaging                Bi-directional communication

Selling                                                   Helping the consumer to buy

On your schedule                                   When it's relevant to the consumer

One-touch                                             Multi-touch

Isolated contacts                                    Coordinated interaction

I will delve more deeply into each of these characteristics of 'engagement' areas in coming blogs and would love to hear your thoughts on any other aspects that you think are important.

 

 

 

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