Igniting Customer Connections. Frawley Andrew

Figure 1.1 These statistics from Nielsen and Statista show that consumers are changing the way they use their multiple devices to interact with brands.

      Tectonic Shift #2: The Data Deluge

      More and more media is digital, meaning that media and channels are generating and consuming massive amounts of data, leading to the proverbial data deluge. Data is now available everywhere, on almost every topic – and individual consumer. Digital channels not only allow instantaneous connections but also generate huge amounts of data about a consumer's activities and interests. In fact, one week of web behavioral data is equal in size to an entire marketing database's volume 10 years ago.

      This data is shifting from controlled and regulated to decentralized and self-curated. So user-generated content, such as a crucial tweet, can move faster than the traditional powers – government and private industry. For example, when American Apparel tweeted its ill-considered “Hurricane Sandy Sale” in 2012, consumers took to the Twittersphere and created their own storm of disapproval. In just one day, the sentiment score for the company decreased by 60 points, according to AdWeek.

      Tectonic Shift #3: The Infrastructure Goes Global

      The marketing landscape used to seem narrow and fairly defined for all but the biggest brands. Now expanding digital channels extend that landscape significantly. The focus can be global for brands that want to be global, and local for those that want to stay that way. The Internet (and especially mobile) knows no geographic bounds. You can reach customers in Hong Kong as well as those around the corner, if you choose to take that route and invest the money to do it right. You can tailor your message to their culture and language. And you can distribute your product with remarkable efficiency – or fail by thinking it's easy and disappointing your customers (and triggering ripples of wider consumer disappointment). The challenge for many organizations would be unimaginable a decade ago – taking full advantage of globally distributed transactions while providing localized support.

      Tectonic Shift #4: Digital Channels Create Opportunities for Companies of All Sizes

      Sophisticated multichannel marketing used to be the domain of only the largest companies with big marketing departments and complex technologies. Today, mobile and social media are great normalizers and equalizers. Anyone can have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed. They can quickly populate it with content – and customers can help. A small or emerging business can have global reach instantly, and at a very low cost.

      Tectonic Shift #5: The World Moves Faster Than Ever

      Traditional marketing – and by that I mean marketing from a decade ago or even less – looks really slow from our current vantage point, while the landscape looks far bigger (and harder to traverse) than in the past. Now that traditional marketing has shifted to digital media, now that marketers are interactive marketers, now that consumers are always on, the speed of change is faster than ever – for customers and the brands that serve them. Brands have the unequaled opportunity to be connected in real time to customers, as well as the challenge of delivering a unified customer experience in a multichannel world. Consumers expect a lightning-fast response from their brands – to a request, complaint, or review. They want respectful, responsive service. In fact, 71 percent of consumers agree: valuing their time is the most important factor in good customer service. And the stakes are higher, since one customer's dissatisfaction can quickly spread. But get it right, and consumers spread that news as well.

      No one has enough time, creating a degree of time starvation that is reflected in all aspects of consumer behavior. For marketers, this lack of time means that you must be agile, delivering information designed to be consumed and understood quickly. And dynamic content generation speeds the whole process even more.

      Tectonic Shifts Drive Crucial Changes in Consumer Behavior

      What have these tectonic shifts done to affect the way consumers behave? Plenty.

      • Consumers are never more than an arm's length from all the information in the world. They can communicate with each other (and brands), engage in social media, and conduct research on products and much more – anytime, anywhere. And always on means being in a shopping state of mind. On average, 73 percent of participants in a recent study visited a retail location after receiving a location-aware text message. And 61 percent made a purchase as a result of the message, according to eMarketer and Forrester Research.

      • Consumers are connected to each other in new ways. The news (good or bad) spreads faster than ever. People talk, tweet, post, and blog. And their reach is just as broad as ours as marketers. Every citizen-buyer is a marketer now, just like everyone is an on-the-scene reporter – whether they choose to take advantage of that role or not.

      • The purchase path is nonlinear. Consumers are making decisions in real time, wherever they go. Customers are making buying decisions all the time – on their tablets, on their phones, or at work when they're supposed to be doing something else. The path to purchase is now less of a journey and more of a decision space, where consumers enter and leave based on their readiness to buy – and the ability of marketers to move them into that zone.

      Figure 1.2 Millennial consumers are more likely to trust their peers than brands, with 50 percent reading reviews on their mobile devices while shopping (versus 21 percent of nonmillennials, according to Forrester Research).

      Figure 1.3 Everywhere commerce turns shopping inside out. Purchasing can take place anywhere or any time a consumer has access to a screen. By 2017, mobile commerce will account for 26 percent of U.S. retail e-commerce sales (eMarketer).

      Figure 1.4 Consumers are more likely to opt in and exchange privacy for relevant messaging that they see value in. Eighty-one percent of recipients of e-mails containing personalization drawing from previous shopping behaviors and preferences are more likely to increase their purchases. Thirty-one percent are willing to share a mobile number, and 32 percent are willing to share their social handles (eMarketer, National Retail Federation).

      Marketing interactions, once quarterly or monthly, are happening all the time, and in exponential numbers. A major marketing organization may have thousands of campaigns running all the time. In fact, the word campaign– implying a long, concerted effort – may no longer apply. It's more about marketing interactions– small, focused, agile efforts aimed at achieving a near-term goal while building deeper, long-term customer connections.

      • Social media has a powerful voice. Thanks to ubiquitous social media, global and local are more intertwined than ever. The ripple effects of events happening across the world – of revolutions, extreme weather, economic trends, and more – have a local impact, good or bad. One image of your company's product or logo in the wrong place at the wrong time can undermine years of good intentions.

      • Consumers have high expectations. Particularly among younger consumers, the expectations for content and communication are high, boosted by Amazon.com, YouTube, and much more. Consumers expect relevant recommendations at the right time. They expect consistency across all channels. And video and other rich media aren't an exception anymore. They're the standard, and that standard continues to grow. To be effective, marketing needs to be in the media vernacular of the moment, or (ideally) ahead of that moment. After all, 65 percent of your audience learns visually, according to WebDAM Marketing Trends for 2014. And visual data is processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than text is.

      • Information about a consumer's experience and emotion are widely available. In the past, we had to rely on focus groups and anecdotes to understand the emotional feelings of consumers. Today, through social media, most consumers are volunteering lots of information about how they feel. This information, along with low-cost surveys, allows brands to actively use emotional data