Marketing 1.0 Needs to Stop
Sam Lawrence, CMO of Jive Software, put out a post close to my heart - Marketing and PR departments clinging to idea that they need to control the message. Companies can not stop people from talking about them. Technological change means that their messages can spread rapidly through the internet; growing until traditional media picks up their story and spreads it to a whole new audience. Marketers need to stop viewing this reality as a threat and begin to embrace the opportunity. Those same technological changes allow them to engage their customers in an ongoing conversation (As Sam says "Ask permission to move from transaction to interaction").
The era of the 12 week marketing campaign is over.
Welcome to the era of customer conversation! Now, marketers need to take ownership of this opportunity. If they don't embrace this shift, it is unlikely their executive management team will. They must evangelize the opportunity through all areas of the business. Sell engineering on the benefits of having customers shape the direction of product (there are limitations to this concept). Sell PR that conversing directly with the consumer will save them headaches. Sell senior management that a well executed customer engagement strategy will strengthen the value of the brand. And sell legal...well, you will need to figure out some way to deal with the lawyers (ask them to draft a blogging policy which could extend to any conversations in the internet). The era of the customer conversation has begun. Now marketers need to take the initiative to get their companies to embrace it.
