How to create commitment by placing the human at the heart of marketing?
If you need to think about how to sell a product or service, it's important to aim for relevant marketing and engagement. The future of marketing has not been written yet, and represents an opportunity for industry professionals. This is the subject of this conference moderated by Brian Solis, expert on the subject.
What is the impact of innovation on marketing?
Companies need innovation, and see what their competitors and business partners are doing in that direction. In reality, it would be better not to do so, because the relationship they have with their customers should be unique, and therefore not copied. It is indeed better to try something new if you want to be truly innovative.
When a marketer finds a good idea, the one who gives him permission or not to realize it is either a lawyer or a senior executive. Industry professionals are therefore seeking to convince people to approve their ideas, rather than thinking of the end consumers who should engage with the brand.
It is counterproductive because decision makers generally do not want to take risks. However, today's consumers are not the same as before and present a different customer journey today, which requires a transformation of marketing.
What influence do changes in consumer behavior have?
It is essential to connect to and inspire the human instead of manipulating it. In the past, brands spent a lot of money on image and media to convince people that they were different from the competition. But today consumers are not even paying attention to advertising, yet they are constantly connected to their smartphone.
As a result, marketing should be empathically apprehended to achieve different levels of creativity than the conventional advertising domain could offer. Today's consumer is going through a different customer journey from 10 years ago, so it needs to be adapted to these behavioral changes. However, the first point of contact of the shopping journey is no longer traditional advertising or the desktop, but now the smartphone.
Google refers to "micro-moments" as the fragmented, real-time, inconsistent moments in which consumers use or touch their phones throughout the day. It is during these micro-moments that it is now possible to send them a relevant advertising message. The technology that makes it possible to become more human and more connected is also a real subject of our modern societies.
Define engagement in the digital transition era
The best marketing strategy is based on one goal: businesses must be able to define what engagement looks like. However, to date, we measure the wrong performance indicators. Companies must therefore begin to use relevant KPIs to identify causes and consequences as part of their strategies. There is only a decade left before traditional consumers continue to exist.
In a world of machines, the human becomes the master "application", more important than the device in his hands. The way customers think is different, more digital, and is subject to billions of micro-moments a day. A company is not only competing with its competitors and its market, but also with movies, reality TV, videos, news...
It is therefore important to understand when is the right time to address consumers in order to adapt to their new behaviors.
For example, Facebook is one of the best illustrations of the traditional web-mobile transition. Many people thought Facebook would not be able to survive because the platform did not have a mobile app. The American giant has demonstrated the opposite by remaining relevant, because it is in constant competition to build the "future".
Empathy as inspiration to generate commitment
We are at a time when it is possible to reinvent everything. As previously mentioned, companies need to rethink their vision of success in terms of better performance indicators, seeking more to understand the consumer. Whatever the sector of activity, being present on the market is not enough, and being everywhere is no more relevant ... Each company must adapt its offer to its target.
To connect with the human and achieve this result, combine technology and marketing is wise. Indeed, it allows companies to provide an optimal customer experience and source of emotions. They can hope that the consumer becomes the ambassador of the brand.
Empathy should be their first source of inspiration. It must remind marketers that they are not only marketers but above all human beings, just like the people they are addressing, and that they are driven by emotions.
Why use social objects design to create emotion?
When social networks were designed, they relied in particular on "social objects", which generate a human connection between two people. Social objects are designed for marketing, so brands generate content, advertising, and video to differentiate themselves. The more the marketing is conceived from the perspective of social objects, the more relevant and effective it is because it affects the emotion of the target. Social objects design is based on the following four elements:
- The needs and behavior of customers
- Business priorities
- The culture of the network that we wish to exploit
- The targeted device and its capabilities
For Brian Solis, the use of social objects must be thought out in order to give meaning and objectives to marketing: "think about the design of your social objects, the design of your programs: actions, reactions and transactions, what do you want to see happen? ".
Brands must not fall into the error of copying other companies or try to be better because they do not know more. Every society must try new things, so that its case becomes a use case, a standard that others want to reproduce. Only then can real innovation take place.
SPEAKER: Brian SOLIS, DIGITAL ANALYST
