E-Commerce Link : Acquisition 2.0
Experiential marketing is changing the game
March 2008 By Jeff Molander
Selling on the Web is quickly becoming less about marketers’ supply meeting up with customers’ demand, and more about customers actively bringing demand toward supply. The question is: Who is driving the bus?
Given the Web’s increasingly social nature, today’s customers are bypassing “interceptive” strategies like search marketing and are instead choosing a variety of nontraditional paths to discover products and services—faster and easier than ever before. What’s a savvy marketing executive to do?
The answer may seem radical. Today’s marketers must help customers find, consider and purchase products and services by creating authentic digital experiences. That’s the new twist—and it’s not just a load of hyped-up social media spin.
This new paradigm will be fueled by the recently announced Data Portability Working Group. This consortium of unlikely partners (including Plaxo, LinkedIn, Google, SixApart, Facebook and Yahoo’s Flickr) is banding together to ensure users of the “social Web” can have power over the data they’re putting out. By ensuring social media sites and services are interoperable, the user experience becomes simple, and the social information becomes portable and shared. It’s the first step toward providing marketers with a serious “social marketing platform.”
Acquisition in a Socialized Web
Fundamental elements of the customer/marketer relationship are changing. Why? The Web is inherently interactive and, yes, increasingly social. Therefore, how customers interact via the Web with your brand is proving to be experiential.
Marketers are continually hearing the mantra: “Participate and have a conversation with customers.” This is because customers are finding new ways to participate in various online activities. Sure, they still love search, but they’re rapidly finding more social and participatory elements such as product reviews, product design suggestions and a new thing called “crowdsourcing” (more on that in a moment) to be helpful and even fun.
As customer behaviors emerge, new marketing practices are needed. Acquisition and retention cannot survive on strategies like affiliate and search marketing alone. Intercepting customers during their buying processes isn’t enough. What is the new philosophy? Some call it “conversational” marketing. Whatever name you give it, this emerging practice area is all about joining in with customers—listening to them and interacting on a more intimate level.
Given the Web’s increasingly social nature, today’s customers are bypassing “interceptive” strategies like search marketing and are instead choosing a variety of nontraditional paths to discover products and services—faster and easier than ever before. What’s a savvy marketing executive to do?
The answer may seem radical. Today’s marketers must help customers find, consider and purchase products and services by creating authentic digital experiences. That’s the new twist—and it’s not just a load of hyped-up social media spin.
This new paradigm will be fueled by the recently announced Data Portability Working Group. This consortium of unlikely partners (including Plaxo, LinkedIn, Google, SixApart, Facebook and Yahoo’s Flickr) is banding together to ensure users of the “social Web” can have power over the data they’re putting out. By ensuring social media sites and services are interoperable, the user experience becomes simple, and the social information becomes portable and shared. It’s the first step toward providing marketers with a serious “social marketing platform.”
Acquisition in a Socialized Web
Fundamental elements of the customer/marketer relationship are changing. Why? The Web is inherently interactive and, yes, increasingly social. Therefore, how customers interact via the Web with your brand is proving to be experiential.
Marketers are continually hearing the mantra: “Participate and have a conversation with customers.” This is because customers are finding new ways to participate in various online activities. Sure, they still love search, but they’re rapidly finding more social and participatory elements such as product reviews, product design suggestions and a new thing called “crowdsourcing” (more on that in a moment) to be helpful and even fun.
As customer behaviors emerge, new marketing practices are needed. Acquisition and retention cannot survive on strategies like affiliate and search marketing alone. Intercepting customers during their buying processes isn’t enough. What is the new philosophy? Some call it “conversational” marketing. Whatever name you give it, this emerging practice area is all about joining in with customers—listening to them and interacting on a more intimate level.
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Jeff wrote:
The notion of ROI must be redefined and we coudln't agree more.
We focus on what we call the Soft Sell market and Soft Sell marketers.
Here's a brief description for your readers.
Soft Sell is all about the difference between ROI and ROE.
If someone buys something from you and they expect that the amount of money they pay for it will return to them plus a profit, that's called an ROI - Return on Investment - transaction.
This is the way most standard business transactions are designed and understood.
But what if you're a parenting counselor and someone comes to you for advice with their 5 year old. You make a suggestion and it works. Their child is better. And they give you a check.
Do they expect the amount of the check to return to them plus a profit? No. That's not the nature of the transaction.
What you've done is changed their life experience. And for that type of transaction we use the term ROE - Return of Experience.
Soft Sell marketers specialize in ROE - Return of Experience.
Soft Sell marketers create authentic digital experiences as well as offline experiences for those they serve and service.
Bravo, Jeff. Keep opening new horizons.
Judith & Jim
http://www.bridgingheartandmarekting.com/blog