Engage Your Customers or Die
Monday February 05, 2007
Think your advertising is doing its job? In a recent study, 76% of respondents did not believe that companies told the truth in their advertisements. You read that right: 76 out of 100 people do not believe the commercials they see on TV, hear on the radio or read in a newspaper, magazine or online. For a company trying to grow a business, that number is a scary proposition. How and where can you attract your target demographic? More importantly, how can you receive a return on investment for your marketing dollars?
Marketing is a much greater challenge than ever before. Consumers are more fragmented than they ever have been. There are so many choices out there — from 300 cable channels to DVDs to video games to the vast Internet. The new challenge for your business is to recognize where your target markets are congregating. Then you must develop a marketing campaign that will engage these markets to grow your business and brand.
Now you’re probably thinking that’s what marketing has always set out to do: engage potential customers. That might have been the definition all along, but there has actually been very little engagement.
For many years, marketing has been a one-way street. Marketers would say whatever they wanted through a commercial or ad and then hoped that people who see or read that ad then go and buy from the client. A true one-way street: message goes out to customers, nothing comes back.
But recent technology has given users unprecedented control over what and who markets to them. New tools like TiVo and DVR, on-demand cable TV, satellite radio, pop-up blockers — they’re all successful because they give the user the power to shut you, the marketer, out. Consumers are now putting the burden back on the marketers to court them and give them something worth looking at, listening to and talking about.
This is where engagement marketing comes into play. Engagement marketing begins by understanding who the target market is and what they like, what they feel, what issues they are dealing with. This is more than a guessing game to figure out who your audience is. It takes research and analysis. Sometimes it pays to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Armed with this information, we at Capstrat develop a marketing campaign to get in front of those markets. But it’s not enough just to get their attention. The campaign must engage the user — inviting them to think, respond, get involved.
The payoff is greater however, stimulating increased demand for your product, service or message. For example, part of a greater Campaign for Real Beauty, the Dove “Evolution” viral video has been viewed more than two million times. Since the campaign started, Dove products have posted double-digit gains in sales.
Engagement marketing is by no means a magic cure-all that will replace traditional marketing and advertising. To be sure, Dove still shows up in TV commercials and magazine ads. Very simply, engagement marketing is a new avenue to target and sell to your audience. It’s designed to work in conjunction with both traditional and non-traditional strategies — to make them work harder and smarter.
But unlike traditional media, which relied on historical research with no real-time feedback, engagement marketing gives you immediate access to metrics and analytics of the campaign’s performance. So you can fine-tune your messages on the fly. Now your marketing can be incredibly flexible, allowing you to respond to your markets quickly and easily.
Bottom line, the goal is to create something worth talking about, doing something remarkable. Because in today’s ultra-cluttered marketplace, if you are not remarkable, you are invisible.
