Читать книгу Igniting Customer Connections - Frawley Andrew - Страница 11

The empowerment of consumers with new, faster ways to communicate globally can be a blessing or a curse to brands. On the plus side, the world is your audience – more prospects, customers, and potential revenue. We, as marketers, are delivering programs into the marketplace that are driving tremendous results on a scale that couldn't have been achieved in the past. But consumer empowerment also means that brands have to consider the potential social impact – at all levels, from manufacturing to marketing. No apparel company wants to be the brand behind a collapsed sweatshop in Southeast Asia. No organization wants to do anything that it wouldn't want to see in its customers' Facebook Timeline or Twitter feed. No technology brand wants to send out a marketing message that manages to offend a faraway nation. All the impact comes back home now, faster than ever.

One fact is clear – the consumer is increasingly in the driver's seat. Ordinary people are seizing an extraordinary ability to change the way they communicate, buy, and live. This disrupted, consumer-driven marketplace opens up new opportunities for marketers to deliver relevant information and offers that meld seamlessly with the consumer's lifestyle. But it all starts with making stronger, deeper customer connections.

An empowered consumer creates very different marketing experiences, more complicated buying patterns, and a higher degree of uncertainty about what consumers will do. As we move into the future, “we must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty,” says Nate Silver, renowned statistician and predictor of everything from baseball to presidential elections. This insight points toward a much more fluid, ever-changing world. In that context, successful marketing needs to recognize that there's not one predefined path for every consumer. Every action triggers a reaction and multiple paths forward. Marketers need to anticipate and predict consumer needs as accurately as possible by using data, insights, and the wide array of tools now available. Only then can we ensure that marketing is relevant and effective.