The Shift That Will Change Marketing Forever
By: Aarron Spinley
Tags: Society, Business, Marketing, Strategy, Digital Marketing

The Shift That Will Change Marketing Forever

The marketing industry is at evolutionary crossroads. It’s a time of reckoning, an inflection point perhaps. Call it want you want, a shift is finally starting to occur.

Photo: Shutterstock

There are multiple definitions of marketing. Just Google it. You’ll spend the next 2 weeks reading. Probably the best single-source destination is nearly a decade old, from Heidi Cohen and her “72 Marketing Definitions”.

The short summary is that while yes, some definitions contradict others, the most commonly accepted understanding is perhaps best summed by Dr Philip Kotler who defines marketing as:

The science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services.

As a consequence, most businesses focus almost exclusively, on acquisition.

Does that meet the intent of the wider definition? I’ll let you decide.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the function of acquisition. In fact, it is critical for growing a customer base. But the methods and mindsets required for the pure acquisition, simply do not translate to long term customer engagement.

And not just in the ranks of practitioners, but by extension, the products that are developed for them by vendors around the world.

Engagement is not about segments or campaigns. It is relational and longitudinal, and in fact, it is where true brand perception lies. And so our multitude of product silos — from CRM to marketing automation, to eCommerce, to identity management, to Voice of Customer, to media engines (and on and on and on) — demand side to supply side — don’t always serve us well.

Silos and disconnections beckon.

Yes, engagement is a whole different ball game to the acquisition, and when businesses make the mistake of mixing them up, they tend to treat long-standing customers like campaign targets.

They also tend to focus at the top of the “funnel”, and existing customers often find that there is no commitment to a relationship at all.

Stephanie calls the contact center.

She gives her credentials and describes her query. They transfer her to the right department, where she gives her credentials again.

“How can I help you today?”, comes the ever-helpful agent. Patiently, she describes her query again. “Oh, woops — you need a different department”.

The transfer begins. Stephanie sits on hold, glancing at her watch. She doesn’t have long before she will have to pick up her father. The call picks up.

“Hello, this is Andy. Can I have your full name and password please?”.

It’s bad enough when a company doesn’t know that Stephanie was on its website last week, in one of its stores yesterday, and is now calling the contact center today, all in order to continue a single conversation with a company that she is trying to buy from.

But it’s indefensible that it loses its memory within the same channel, on the same journey!

I call this brand dementia. It’s frankly, ridiculous, and yet it’s everywhere.

And I mean, everywhere.

But that’s not all. Brands that have allowed a mercenary acquisition mindset to dominate their marketing culture, have found that the technological advances of the last decade, in particular, are simply too tempting.

Their use — and yes by that I do mean misuse — of their customer’s data, has given rise to a societal backlash. Among the myriad of morally questionable practices, everyone likes to cite the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but Facebook has not been alone in the murkier side of our marketing and data marriage.

Yet, there are still many marketers out there who contend that a traditional hard press acquisition mindset remains the cornerstone of the profession and that we all just need to push on.

Their abiding principle remains that they can acquire customers faster than the business might lose them. And besides, they are tasked with growth.

But they miss the point. Society — e.g. our customers — demand more. Let us not forget, this is where our growth actually comes from.