Hierarchy of Customer Effects
I am sure someone smarter than me thought of this, but I wanted to talk about the goals of marketing initiatives. All marketing initiatives should strive to connect with your customers. If one doesn't, you must seriously question its importance and relevance to your company goals.
Customer connection can occur at many different levels. This is where the Hierarchy of Customer Engagement comes in. It is a nice way of classifying how you hope to connect with your customer. Over time, it will become clear what initiatives are best for what type of connection.
Looking at the model, we see that message is the lowest level of customer engagement. It is simply delivering a message to the customer like a TV advertisement.
The next level, engage, is where the company engages and interacts with the customers. Where message was a one-way communication, engage is a two-way dialog. In its simplest form, it is a 1-800 number for customer comments. At its most complex, it leverages the internet, social networking, and new tools like widgets to create an on-going relationship with the consumer.
Beyond engage is purchase. Here our goal is move the customer to purchase the product. It may contain parts of message and engage, but the overriding goal is to convert the sale. Now, you may argue that the overriding goal of message and engage is to convert a sale, but I think of the previous two as more of a way to strengthen brand through communication. For example, a blog with comments is more about discussing product issues and is not focused on the sale. Obviously, the overarching goal of a blog strategy is that it will build customer trust that will result in a sale, but it is not the immediate purpose of the initiative.
At the highest level, we try to get consumers to endorse our products to their friends. Common sense tells us this is the most powerful type of marketing - who doesn't ask friends for recommendations? Achieving this level of customer connection requires a strong multiple-initiative strategy. The endorsements need to be optional to the customer (Sorry, Facebook co-opting customer endorsements don't work), therefore they are difficult to get - but it is also this optional character that makes them so powerful!
Different company strategies require different levels of customer engagement. For example, if your company relies on a strong brand, some of its strategies should try to engage and endorse its customers. If you just sell a commodity, then message and purchase is all you need - tell them the price and how to buy.
Anyways, I encourage you to look at your company marketing initiatives and ask "At what level are we trying to connect with our customers?" Then ask, "Do this match with our corporate strategy?" Are there any other levels of customer connection? Let me know in the comments.
