In short, mass marketing is dead or breathing its final death rattle breaths. The more research & insight I read on this as well as look at how I buy and interact with brands, the more I know this is not hype.
If you have taken the time to read this, first thank you. Second, pause, think and ask yourself, when was the last time I opened a marketing email, from any brand, b2c or b2b, and thought, you know what, yes, I will buy what you are telling me to! I would hazard a guess it is never, or hardly.
Yet, I bet you are on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. You will proactively like brands pages, follow them on twitter. You Follow influencers on Linkedin, you may see your trusted network like or follow brands or people and you then follow that brand. You are influenced by Amazon and the magical 4 star reviews, given by people you don't even know; the same goes for Hotels, holidays, restaurants, bars, restaurants, Uber, Deliveroo - every aspect of our lives is being dominated by what our trusted networks tell us, or by 4 star ratings. Not by what the brands tells us to think.
Then when you engage with that brand, you want it to be all about you, you want the buying experience to be as easy as possible - or friction-less - Amazon, Uber & Deliveroo are examples of getting this so very right. The minute that digital buying journey starts to get complicated or does not meet the expectation that has been created digitally...you get where I am going with this.
The data about your clients is out there, I am not talking email addresses; their digital footprint they leave all over the social platforms they engage with, voluntarily & publicly. The technology is there to understand this.
The question is are your people & processes?
The future of marketing is collaborative. Fifty years ago, marketers were in control. Consumers had little say about what advertising they saw or heard or read; they had little say in when product launches would take place; they had little say really anywhere in the marketplace, because they had relatively limited access to information. Today, however, this power dynamic has been turned on its head. Now, with smartphones in their pockets and in their hands – giving nearly instant access to information about pretty much everything – consumers are in control. Through online marketplaces, they can decide when to buy goods and services, for how much, and how frequently. They can choose to leave bad reviews or good ones.
