Marketing Through Social Transitions

Chaos is the system reorganizing itself.

Sometimes I weary of the digital crowd talking to itself. While I’m guilty of speaking the jargon with abandon, occasionally, I feel like I’m speaking beatnik poetry from the 60’s and I need George Carlin to slap me up.

We’re learning. We’re reorganizing. We’re going from national to global and back again. We’re going from Latin to Slanguage and from physical to virtual. And still, in all fairness, the social media community is one of the most generous and responsive groups I have ever encountered - beatniks and all.

With so much opportunity and evolving complexity in the online and mobile arenas, not to mention the swings of global markets, how can you leverage your marketing experience to sort through these ever-emerging technologies and swiftly discriminate between your choices?

Not all of your customers are early adaptors – but even boomers are adapting swiftly. So as we transition we need to accommodate everyone’s communication preferences and the map has gone astral.

What learning can we carry forward? And what is net new?

Of course it starts with:
The brand. 
However you articulate your brand behaviors, identity and what you want the customer experience to be, it needs to be expressed in the online medium with the same rigor as it would offline. That seems so painfully obvious and yet... Do you remember how disjointed the offline Sears store was from the Sears catalog was from sears.com? They felt like three different companies. I think they were.

Now many have or are shifting their marketing and distribution to the online arena and some like amazon.com have always been virtual.

What should you do?
- Whatever the offline/online ratio, dedication to delivering the brand through every channel and available communications vehicle should remain paramount. Did I already say that seems painfully obvious? Some things really never change.

- Take the customers’ pain away. Can you help hockey families solve their scheduling nightmares? Or help travelers identify and solve the medical, climate and electrical needs for their trip? Providing information that leads to a cost/time saving solution or allows them to make an informed and confident purchase decision gives your brand the edge. New apps give you huge opportunities.

Customer Touchpoints. In the offline realm, P.O.P. and communications delivered through Centers of Influence dominated customer touchpoints because you knew you were engaging the customer while they were considering your category.

Now this becomes magnificently complex. With online and mobile in the mix your customer can purchase your product while riding in cab in Istanbul and with Twitter, a lightning rod of information that you did not provide, can reach them within moments.

What should you do?
- Employ a comprehensive listening strategy and be able to proactively respond, positively and with value, 24 hours a day.
- Deliver promotions, relevant content and transactions via mobile.
- Consider digital POP- If you don’t, your competition will.

The Decision Chain
The classic marketing tale is sending a box of cereal to market. It needs to survive the regional distribution and merchandising hurdles of the supermarket industry and if it does well, it ends up on the bottom shelf where ‘junior’ spots it from his seat in the bottom of the grocery cart and hollers up to mama to buy the sugary mix.

Now mom has mobile access to nutritional information, access to her social network of other mothers, and can purchase Earth’s Best Organic Oatmeal Cereal from amazon.com while she’s standing in line in SuperValu.

What should you do?
- Employ a comprehensive listening strategy and be ready to respond positively and with value, 24 hours a day.
- Have strong relationships with industry bloggers, passionate customers and present your brand P.O.V.. via blogs or other media.
- Be present and ready to deliver promotions, sales support, provide relevant content and transactions via social and mobile spaces.
- Consider digital POP

Cultural implications 

Historically we looked at Coke as the standard bearer for customer data. They knew the clothing, music, color and taste preferences of each demographic and made, packaged and promoted soft -drinks to match.

With the global reach of online and mobile technology, understanding cultural implications has gone way past discriminating between southern and eastern soda preferences. For example: Don’t try and sell unlucky phone numbers in China.

What should you do?
- Your homework. Understand the cultural context for your product or services.
- Hire a sociologist or anthropologist to help you understand the culture sensitivities of your audience.
- Be ready to adapt.

My next post will be an examination of tactics. Many of the considerations of offline communications transfer directly to online. We’ll look at similarities and the new dynamics of high-speed 24/7 access to the world of information creates for marketers.

In the meantime, get thee to a seminar. It's integral to the Listen. Learn. Adapt. strategy of survival. The online community offers lots of them and we should all be at all of them. But get to one of them anyway.