Consumers expect brands to listen, understand, and act. Marketers are expected to uncover genuine insights and create truly personalized, relevant, and memorable experiences to satisfy the end user. We recognize this era of marketing as The Age of You. But how can brands live up to these expectations?
You must understand how to collect and apply valuable audience insights and consumer behavior data that will drive your strategy’s success and how a highly customized content piece will win over your audience and increase revenue.
To thrive in the current era of marketing, we first have to understand how we got here: the 4 Stages of Branding.
1. The Age of Identity
Market positioning identifier. Set your business and individual products apart from the crowd. The need to be different.
2. The Age of Value
Valuable business assets. Language changing from cost to value. The need to show value.
3. The Age of Experience:
Deliver satisfying and differentiated experiences. Interactions are seamless, contextually relevant, and increasingly based on creating an ecosystem of integrated products, services, information, and entertainment: both physical and digital. The need to create advocacy, influence, and engagement.
4. The Age of You
Connecting businesses to people – and people to each other – brands serve as enablers of both business and personal value creation. Recognize the human in the data, uncover genuine insights, and create truly personalized and curated experiences to satisfy the “Mecosystem”. The need to understand the consumer and create a personalized experience.
The Problem
The problem is that your brand lens is only a very small fraction of your audience. If we want to understand the consumer, then we have to take a deeper look:
– What are their shopping habits? - What kind of music do they listen to? - What type of clothing do they prefer? - What are their hobbies? - Where do they want to travel? - What is their favorite food? - How do they feel about certain brands? - Are they married or single? – Do they have kids?
The Good News
The good news is that technology allows us to personalize online interactions, adding new opportunities for brands to relate with their customers and find creative ways to connect people to products in an authentic way. All the brands must change their focus: “focusing on interactions instead of transactions”. “Customer interactions with a brand become more holistic – less transactional, more focused on creating an experience where customers interact with each other and information – essentially building an environment where they want to buy.” Success will belong to marketers who understand their audiences on every level and focus their efforts on data-driven personalization.
– Customer experience (CX) is rooted in personalization and value. Personalization depends on technology but it is human insight that moves it beyond the algorithms relating products and people. Value is an expression of cost and benefit. The benefits to a customer are a mix of what they get and how they perceive it, which is why marketing has to be both the voice of the customer to the enterprise and the voice of the enterprise to the customer.
– Insights are richer and more actionable than ever. The insights we develop are not developed in isolation but at the intersection of understanding how individuals make decisions – including consumer motivation and shopper behavior. While personalization used to be a luxury, it is now the new standard. Therefore, success will belong to the marketers who can listen, learn and act.
– Collaboration is vital to success. Insight should be utilized within every interaction across the customer journey to deepen engagement. If used properly, these insights transform customer relationships. This drives more sales, satisfaction, and customer loyalty.
This is why marketers who prioritize customer experience and data-driven personalization will achieve greater returns on investment. Brands that seek to lead in the Age of You will have to recognize the human in the data, uncover genuine insights, and create a truly personalized and curated experience ecosystem to satisfy the Mecosystem. And in our hyper-competitive business environment, if you’re not growing, you’re essentially receding.
It’s time to be forward-thinking, innovative, and adaptable to keep up with our changing times.
