Download consumer-first marketing defined

CONSUMER-FIRST MARKETING
DEFINED
Transforming Relationship Marketing with
Integrity, Empathy, and Relevance
Customer engagement has traditionally been dictated by marketing
calendars and sales goals, but this marketer-first approach is out-of-touch
with today’s connected and empowered consumers. In order to remain
relevant, relationship marketers must flip convention upside down. At
Selligent, we call this new approach “Consumer-First Marketing.” In the
pages that follow, this whitepaper outlines what we mean by it and how
marketing programs can be transformed with a commitment to integrity,
empathy, and relevance.
The traditional
marketing model
is broken.
If you’re experiencing a decrease in marketing effectiveness with your current programs, it
could very well be because you’re relying on obsolete practices that haven’t kept pace with today’s
empowered, always-on consumer.
DO THESE SITUATIONS SOUND FAMILIAR?
• Sales and retention programs focus tightly on marketing goals like upsell and cross sell, or on
generic holidays or life stages.
• Consumers find transactions like opting out or returning a purchase confusing or annoying.
• Messaging is not coordinated across channels, creating disjointed customer experiences.
• Promotions feel forced due to product-focused messaging and limited personalization.
• Social and mobile programs are an afterthought to email, search, and advertising.
• Masses of relevant search, social, and purchase data go unused.
The fabric of consumer relationships has fundamentally changed. Old tactics don’t work because consumers are more
demanding, are more in control, and require that you earn their attention and trust before entering into any kind of
ongoing relationship.
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In today’s multichannel
environment, consumers have
extreme choice and control.
The critical interactions between your customers and your company are undergoing a massive shift
driven by an array of factors.
• Millennials are now the largest living generation. They will soon have the most purchasing power, too. Millennials’
engagement with brands employs more channels, more social interaction, and more research than any past
generation. As a result, millennials expect highly authentic brand relationships on their terms.
• Last year, mobile commerce made up 30% of all e-commerce transactions, totaling more than $100 billion1.
Mobile commerce is growing more than twice as fast as e-commerce overall.
• Consumers are creating data at an unprecedented rate. IDC predicts that there will be 44 trillion gigabytes in the
Digital Universe in 2020 – up nearly 10X from 20132. IDC also estimates only 10% of it is ever analyzed or used
by companies. Yet consumers know companies are collecting their data, which increases their expectation for
personalized experiences.
1 Internet Retailer, “2016 Mobile 500,” August 2015
2 IDC, Digital Universe, April 2014
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Your company’s business goals will always remain your
north star, but you must put the proper emphasis on
what your consumers are looking for and thinking about.
Using the data and insights around you is critical to tune
your approach. You can update your strategy to meet
the expectations of today’s and tomorrow’s consumers.
Multiple studies show that the emerging connected
consumer wants companies to act honestly, to share
similar passions, and to make interactions relevant, and
this requires a more flexible, data-driven approach to
marketing.
Selligent calls this
new approach
Consumer-First
Marketing.
Consumer-First Marketing: A Definition
Consumer-First Marketing inverts the traditional approach to marketing.
Instead of starting with the product or communications channel, this
breakthrough strategy focuses first on consumers to identify opportunities
for filling an unmet need, entertaining, or solving a pressing problem.
With Consumer-First Marketing, marketers implement engagement
strategies that are based on integrity and empathy to ensure that every
communication is meaningful and relevant.
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Why embrace
Consumer-First
Marketing?
• Consumers get the choice and control they demand, and
they perceive their brand experiences to be significantly more
valuable.
• Marketers gain trust and access to consumers by focusing on
their needs.
• Companies see greater overall returns over time when they
prioritize long-term customer loyalty over short-term sales goals.
Marketers build programs that communicate authentically with
individuals using an approach of committed customer service. To do
this well, marketers must understand the consumers’ goals and use
campaign elements like messaging, data, and channel selection that
is most relevant and contextual at the moment of engagement.
WITH CONSUMERFIRST MARKETING,
MARKETERS PUT
THEMSELVES IN
THE CONSUMER’S
SHOES, PLACING
UNIQUE CONSUMER
NEEDS, PASSIONS,
AND EMOTIONS
AHEAD OF
IMMEDIATE
TRANSACTION
GOALS WHENEVER
POSSIBLE.
CONSUMER-FIRST MARKETING ENSURES THAT
• Programs are built on a foundation of integrity
• Campaigns and communications are crafted with empathy
• Data and technology is used to ensure relevance
Consumer-First Marketing is built on integrity, empathy, and relevance.
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Integrity is imperative to build trust. Marketers who operate with integrity
are transparent about their use of data. They hold consumer preferences
in high regard. They share information about their brand and make it easy
for consumers to get information and solve problems in a way that is
satisfying to everyone.
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INTEGRITY MEANS:
• Be honest.
• Apologize for mistakes. Make up for them.
• Stay true to your word.
• Make it easy for consumers to find and
understand your business policies and contact
information.
• Do what’s right by the consumer, and the
business.
INTEGRITY IN ACTION
Online retailer Fab embraces integrity with its customers by automatically opting customers out of
email programs that they never read. This not only shows respect for the customer, it demonstrates
that Fab understands what its customers find valuable. Customers are given the opportunity to resubscribe to that program or change their preferences to receive other types of messages. In either
case, the customer is in control, which is a core tenant of Consumer-First Marketing.
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Empathy builds connections. Marketers who practice empathy strive to
get inside the mind of the consumers with whom they communicate.
While some common needs will surface across consumer groups,
marketers will be more successful if they communicate with empathy at
an individual level. Empathy starts with putting the consumer first, putting
yourself in their shoes. It’s about understanding what drives and motivates
consumers, respecting their actions, and supporting their needs.
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EMPATHY MEANS:
• Find shared passions and lean into them.
• Understand your consumers’ relevant
problems and address them quickly.
• Give customers flexibility with sales channels,
loyalty programs, product exchanges, and
more.
• Speak the language of your consumers, not
business language.
• Understand the consumer’s situation at
the moment of engagement – and act
accordingly.
EMPATHY IN ACTION
Dove racked up 66 million views of its Dove Real Beauty Sketches. The commercial tapped into
empathy in a powerful way by having a forensic artist draw pictures of women based on their own
descriptions and those of strangers. Seeing how strangers viewed each woman more positively
created a deep connection with viewers – many of who were in Dove’s target market.
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Once these two pillars are set in
place, Consumer-First Marketers
strive for relevance.
RELEVANCE IS A RELATIONSHIP ACCELERATOR.
Consumer purchase paths have given way to a much more
complex process that can best be described as a series of
“micro-moments.” Micro-moments are points of opportunity for
marketers to engage with consumers in context, such as a search for
product information on their computer or a scroll through a NewsFeed
on their phone. Location, channel, mindset, recent activities, current
environment; these elements make up the consumer’s “micro moment.”
RELEVANCE MEANS:
• Address your customer 1-to-1.
• Consider context.
• Do nothing rather than the wrong thing.
• Use the customer data that matters most; don’t get distracted
by the rest.
• Analyze individual behaviors to improve over time.
CONSUMER
PURCHASE PATHS
HAVE GIVEN WAY
TO A MUCH MORE
COMPLEX PROCESS
THAT CAN BEST BE
DESCRIBED AS A
SERIES OF “MICROMOMENTS.”
RELEVANCE IN ACTION
IHG centralizes marketing for its 12 different hotel brands, but it is still able to communicate to each customer on
a 1-to-1 basis based on location, hotel preference, travel history, points-level, travel preferences, website searches,
and more. Not only that, they take relevance to a whole new level by using real-time data to refresh the content of
its emails every time they are opened. If a customer goes back to an email to get information for an upcoming stay,
the weather forecast automatically refreshes with up-to-date information. In this way, IHG ensures that it delivers
value in every communication, which has led to a 68% open rate for these messages.
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A typical marketing program is often “marketer first”
marketing. In fact, it’s usually “consumer last!” Marketers
start with a goal – e.g., drive sales. They look at their tactical
options through a series of “marketer-first” lenses. For the
relationship marketer, this often means determining how
she might reach her goal through the channels that she
manages such as email or mobile. She thinks about the
messages she can craft to fit her channel. At the end,
she might make room for some personalization based on
the data she can access. The result is a relatively generic
message fashioned by the marketer’s goal, channel
preferences, and data access rather than the consumer’s
needs. And how surprised should we be when these
campaigns fail to hit their target?
The Conventional Approach:
Marketer-First
A TYPICAL
MARKETING
PROGRAM IS OFTEN
“MARKETER FIRST”
MARKETING. IN
FACT, IT’S USUALLY
“CONSUMER LAST!”
CHANNEL
MESSAGE
DATA
CONSUMER
Marketer-first marketing is out of touch
with today’s empowered consumer
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In a Consumer-First Marketing program, things look very
different. Marketers start by creating a set of rules that
ensure high integrity. These rules work best when they
govern the behavior of every customer-facing aspect
of the company. With these guidelines established,
marketers can start to build a marketing program
focused on empathy with the needs and interests of their
consumers that align best with the company. The synergy
between consumer passion and company purpose is the
marketing sweet spot. Next, marketers can use research
and data to ensure relevance.
Defying Convention:
Consumer First
INTEGRITY
THE SYNERGY
BETWEEN
CONSUMER PASSION
AND COMPANY
PURPOSE IS THE
MARKETING SWEET
SPOT.
COMBINING
INTEGRITY, EMPATHY,
AND RELEVANCE
CAN INCREASE
CONSUMER LOYALTY
AND MAKE IT EASIER
FOR CONSUMERS
TO TRANSACT WITH
YOU.
EMPATHY
RELEVANCE
CONSUMER
Consumer-First Marketing demonstrates respect
for the customer relationship
Consumer-First Marketing doesn’t have to be a dream. An approach that emphasizes the needs of your
customers can fit with your business goals. Combining integrity, empathy, and relevance can increase
consumer loyalty and make it easier for consumers to transact with you. As millennials and other younger
audiences mature, and as smartphones and other new technology change our world, a consumer-first
approach will ensure that you change with it.
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About Selligent
At Selligent, we focus on providing technology and
services that help brands embrace ConsumerFirst Marketing. Our omnichannel engagement
platform enables relationship marketers to use
real-time contextual data to put the needs of
their customers first.
As the world’s leading independent provider
of relationship marketing solutions, Selligent
powers customer relationships for Samsung,
InterContinental Hotels Group, ING, and more than
700 other major brands in retail, travel, automotive,
publishing, and financial services.
Featuring enterprise-strength performance, Selligent’s
technology leads the industry in data management,
campaign orchestration, and audience analytics.
Selligent increases conversions and enhances
engagement for mid-market to enterprise B2C
marketers with its ability to deliver integrated, customercentric experiences across email, display, mobile, social,
and offline.
Selligent serves more than 30 countries globally,
including more than 75 agencies and MSPs. Selligent
has offices in Silicon Valley, New York, London, Belgium,
Paris, Munich, Barcelona, and Australia.
Learn more at www.selligent.com.
USA HQ | 1300 Island Drive | Suite 200 | Redwood City, CA 94065
NEW YORK | 104 West 27th Street | 9th Floor | New York, NY 10001
@Selligent
.com
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