The marketing landscape has become noisy with talk about integration. Integration of your marketing today is the minimum requirement in a continually evolving, connected world. The success of marketing integration ultimately depends on how you reach your audiences. In our connected landscape, it's tougher to do but easier to track, more difficult to keep up with but easier to experiment and it doesn't look like the pace of change is about to slow down for marketers.
Today's marketer has to manage and take advantage of the 4 C's of Marketing in a Connected World:
- Content
- Connectivity
- Connections
- Customer experience
1. Content
Create useful content, which helps first then sells, for every channel your audience participates in. Everyone knows this, right? We believe that most marketers are just creating content based on assumption and anecdote. When you're actually creating valuable content (with metrics to prove it) targeted to the
viewer you want, they will exchange their attention and consideration of your brand in return for your education.
2. Connectivity
Smart phones, cars, wearables and other devices mean instant access to your brand at any time. Your customer now picks up the phone not to call you when they have a question, but to Google or search YouTube for answers. Connectivity has driven instant answers to consumers' questions and winning brands commit to providing this information quickly and thoroughly in a connected world.
3. Connections
Connections are all about building useful CRM/social/email & other opt-in audience connections. How much do you know about your target audience that is useful in serving them? This is not about data collection, it's about knowing enough about what your customer wants and needs so your connection to them is meaningful. The data part is easy. The intelligent and proactive use of it is the hard part.
4. Customer Experience (CX)
The importance of User Experience (UX) in a digital realm has opened marketers’ eyes to the power of the full experience of the customer, thus creating the rise in Customer Experience (CX) professionals and practices. Customer Experience boils down to tracking and improving
all touch points with your audience. By mapping and understanding the customer’s journey with your brand, you can then improve it before and after the sale which makes creating repeat buyers and referral sources that much more efficient.
A connected world for marketers means the ability to target and communicate with audiences better every day. It means using all of your marketing resources to make a connection, just not just a brand impression. For your brand to lead, your marketing not only needs to be integrated but it needs to be useful, easy to access, and function efficiently within the connected world in which we live.