Marketing Integration and 360 Working Culture.

The scope and purpose of marketing is expanding and the need to have well-curated and integrated approaches is now more relevant than ever. In this context, cross-collaborations with sales, finance, IT, operations and other departments become crucially important.

The business-customer relationship can be viewed as part of a complex engine with all parts playing their roles harmoniously in order for the whole to operate smoothly and efficiently. Every aspect of marketing - product development, product marketing, trade marketing, branding, communications, design and digital marketing - must play a part in line with a well-defined marketing strategy, style and voice.

Centralized supervision and 360 cluster marketing planning for pre-launch, launch and post-launch are crucial. The head of marketing must be aligned with the heads of other departments as well as the company’s overall direction to yield a truly 360 working culture and approach to market.

Your marketing focus needs to shift from optimizing customer transactions to enhancing customer experiences throughout space and time.

While all departments must work synergistically under 360 marketing plans, the business-customer relationship can be viewed as part of an ecosystem – a community formed by the symbiotic interactions between customers, the company and partners.

Referred to as omni-channel, this preferred approach is constantly focused on maximizing customer lifetime value. There is no clear beginning or end in the sales cycle process. It’s about cultivating long-term business-customer relationships with increasingly personalized interactions and well-orchestrated engagements throughout all points-of-sale and channels of communication.

Marketing Empowered by Technology

Never before has marketing had at its disposal the kind of innovative technologies that help predict consumer behavior, identify their needs, wants and preferences, and empower personalized direct-to-consumer engagement at the right time and place. Data is created at every customer touchpoint: when s/he visits the company’s website; browses the internet; and interacts with an advertisement; or engages in social media that directly or indirectly relates to the company’s products.

The value of this data increases when cross-referenced and integrated with data from partnering retailers, campaign performance data, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and loyalty programs. Advanced data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning applications are now being used to make sense of all this information. AI integrates across data, tools and platforms, and can even “make decisions” based on established rules and learning. Magic happens when specialized third-party data is also incorporated into the analysis.

For example, we know that weather is a known factor that affects shopping behavior by influencing moods and preferences.Combine weather forecast and geolocation data with all of the above, and you can create powerful predictors of consumer behavior. In this future already in the making, the customer becomes an integral part of the economic offering. S/he is now part of the “product,” and everything else is there to add value in the process.

The following diagrams illustrate this.

The first diagram relates to the model of the past.  The ultimate goal is centered around pushing products via all points-of-sale by using mass communication approaches which are optimized by customer segmentation. Very transactional and unidirectional oriented.

On the other hand, the central idea of omni-channel (the second diagram) relates to maximizing the customer-life value by cultivating long-term relationships with each consumer. This approach is optimized to learn as much as possible about the customer’s needs, wants, preferences, interests, and lifestyles in order to curate personalized and relevant engagements. These offerings are delivered at the right time and place and are comprised of not only products, but also of value-added tips, education, promotions, reminders, inspirations and so on.

Engagement is dynamic and aims to keep a surprised and delighted customer.  An effective omni-channel increases loyalty in that customers grow dependent on such an ecosystem that is perceived as both useful and engaging, making a difference in customers lives over time.

The True Meaning of Personalized Interactions

It’s worth clarifying the meaning of true personalized interactions.  In line with the consumers’ keen attention for authenticity, personalization is more than the matching of each person’s needs, wants, preferences and interests with corresponding offerings and meaningful information.  This engagement with consumers needs to feel “personal.”

Companies have been automating and streamlining as many customer-engaging touch-points as possible, leading to what in a lot of cases resulted in impersonal business-customer relations. Chances are you can think of many instances in which customer service employees have treated us with indifference. Long gone are the days of the “customer is always right.” Empathy, respect and common sense have been replaced by procedures, protocols, and scripted responses. Companies need to be careful not to make customer interactions feel even more impersonal as they adopt the new digital, AI and programmatic technologies.

Stepping into the world of omni-channel requires significant changes in marketing divisions and overall company’s operations.  Such transformation starts at the very top.  For marketing to be capable of modernizing, top management is required to lead and empower the process. The head of marketing will struggle unless there is backing from top management to make difficult, yet necessary structural and cultural changes and define the company’s vision, priorities, and goals.