of , stand guided by , and determined to implement the seven principles of General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ), and other equally respective versions across the different continents , to ensure online marketing efforts are reigned in should they be tending towards overstepping acceptable mandates .
Marketing tech will also allow for customer feedback systems both proactive and reactive , and provide access to useful insights to enable better customer intervention strategies and increased word of mouth referrals .
As marketing gets reloaded this year , and so must the efforts to convert customers into brand ambassadors who ’ ll undertake earnest efforts to rope in people in their networks to partake of whatever the brand of choice may be offering . Reloaded marketing will pay specific attention to customer experience excellence , and the fact that word of mouth continues to be a never ending well of customer waters , and a static silver bullet that never changes .
With recent developments word of mouth has now taken on a new ‘ route to market ’ vide online spread . Customer are quick to be key board happy when emotionally engaged with businesses and brands . The online sharing of joy with others , and being persuasive about the need for those in their networks to not only take note of their feel good feeling but to experience the same enjoyment , creates brand motion of juggernaut proportions . This provides an amazing marketing shortcut leading to high level customer conversion and closing by others on behalf of their brand of choice .
All manner of word of mouth channels be they reviews whether formally solicited or informally put out , rave reviews by happy customers , organization rating sites or facilities that provide for customer sentiment and customer sharing platforms , are still but the strongest marketing tool in existence and need to be seasoned into the marketing reloaded broth being stewed for the year .
Marketing Communications
Marketing Comms - needs to be aligned step by step with each customer touch point along the end to customer journey , that will require to be mapped both from a process and product point of view . To have a more impactful and reloaded marketing outlook , the customer experience teams and the marketing teams need to conduct the customer experience sketch mapping from start to finish together .
This way the marketing communication will be reloaded with customer messages that resonate , and that will edge the customer closer towards the desired warm relationship status triggered by the feeling of connection . The journeys need to be mapped against all possible touch-points both physical and online , and for both potential and actual customers .
Online marketing communication teams need to push out messaging that has been ‘ customer-experience-checked ’ to enable tailoring towards the specific wave that will land effectively . Social media messaging especially needs to be sensitive to the needs , wants and feelings of the customers from a customer facing and not purely marketing perspective .
Marketing comms needs to be clothed in relationship cloak as the need for human beings to have a relational touch will not go away for as long as the social animal DNA exists within mankind , and that is not going anywhere , anytime soon .
Tech has continued to become the channel of choice for marketing and all other communication , but the communicators and the recipients of the communication despite all sorts of technically jazzed up communication channels , still remain human beings with real human needs .
Marketers need to adapt to change , put their ear to the ground , listen to customer spoken and unspoken functional and emotional needs and respond to those . The need for swift and applicable adaptability to customer change has been exacerbated by Covid-19 , and as such brand builders and nurturers need to employ tips , tricks and tactics to ensure the context of marketing content speaks to the audience well in this season .
In addition , as marketing pitches are created , they need to first persuade and have the internal customer bowled over before heading outwards . As marketing reloads , the chief decision makers need to get internal buy in and use internal customers as guinea pigs , sounding boards , experiential testers and pilot recce groups .
Honest and candid feedback will be garnered from this constituents ahead of juxtaposing their findings with those of external audiences . When internal customers are made to feel like external customers and that their feedback on products and services is valued , then this transposes itself to better ideas , better efficiencies and better output at work , with the desire to see movement on products and services for which personal inputs and improvements have been internally sought and externally applied .
Likewise launches and other marketing fanfare needs to include the internal customer , who needs not feel that they are only important when it comes to slogging and not to partying . It behooves marketers to reload marketing and embrace those that work in the back end , to ensure the market items are produced , ready to be served .
Likewise in the same format that happy external customers get converted into the brand ’ s tribe ready to market and defend the brand tooth and nail , so do internal customers when embraced into marketing activities . They actually become more fierce at it . Brand advocates and brand activists doth happy internal customers make . Quite a sharp arrow to have in any discerning marketer ’ s marketing quiver , ready and poised to shoot to target .
As the marketing world focusses on the much needed recovery , rebuilding , restoring , and now reloading , of importance is to do things right by the customer . This strategy transcends all time and all seasons and any brand focusing its marketing strategy for delivery against a backdrop of customer experience excellence can never go wrong .
The pandemic season has awakened the long told truth that there is truly no business without customers , and so all tenets of business marketing being at the fore , need to reload a heavy loading of customer importance . Now more than ever before …
Carolyne Gathuru is the founder and director of strategy at LifeSkills Consulting . She has several years of experience in customer experience strategy development and training . You can commune with her on this or related issues via mail at : CGathuru @ life-skills . co . ke .