The presentation came to an end – finally - and it felt like sunshine coming out of it. “We just have 24 slides and we will make it fast,” he had mentioned when starting up. That was like yesterday. “So, is that it?” Mark got up, asking. Mark was the Vice President, Marketing and had come to finalize an agency for the company in India. Later, his question to the agency – is that it – triggered a discussion about the expectations of an agency and the changing mindset within the company.
The foremost target on any technology marketers mind these days seem to be lead generation. And, most prefer events and direct mailers - creative and often complex - to highlight their company’s various offering. There is of course this continued effort to strengthen existing customer relationships but then again mostly accomplished through focused events or mailers. What are the other most (ab)used tools?Yes - striking an association with the customer’s personal life is increasingly gaining ground as a tactic. Greeting cards, flowers, cakes, champagne – marketers seem to be transforming the target CXOs office into a party hall. Unfortunately, the focus is on bombarding the customer with information that the marketer thinks appropriate and not necessarily what the customer would prefer. Time – marketers took a step back to evaluate the return on their investment. Well, nothing new there.
After a round of mails confirmed there was indeed a disconnect between marketing and the customers, it was time for me to gauge analysts’ findings. According to Forrester’s recent B2B Social Technographics survey, when customers were asked, “which are the most important vendor action factors when selecting the best vendor for a technology purchase?” By far, the No. 1 response was “how well the vendor can supplement our knowledge on the business process/function its product/technology supports.” Well, it is evident – there is no significant gap between the parties but possible differences. And, we all know the broader implications of these differences. So, what should marketers focus on? How about initiatives aimed at customer engagement? Well, sounds no different, right?
Customer engagement is today not restricted to a task to be pursued by a department but it ought to be ‘the culture.’ Marketing will have to transition its center of gravity from one part of the organization to cover the entire organization – empowering individuals at the point of action to ‘market’ the company’s services. Some of the leading organizations are deploying the technique of interactive marketing to realize substantial benefits under marketing practices. How does it work? An enthusiastic marketer says, “My passion is for figuring out what is at the heart of a brand, how consumers connect with it, and how to connect with them — understanding what those consumers have in common and where their needs are different, whether they are in Milan, Minneapolis, or Mumbai.” Now think of those IT account executives working in collaboration with IT members in the client’s organization. Can they be empowered to carry out some marketing initiatives so as to make inroads into the account? It’s certainly up to the marketers.
According to Elisa Steele, exec VP-CMO at Yahoo: "There is no such thing in my mind as an interactive-marketing department. ... So marketing practices, I call them, whether it's brand or communications or consumer or b-to-b, we're organized functionally, and every one of those has to be awesome at interactive."
