Last week I had the pleasure to speak at the next Conference in Berlin. My presentation had the title Marketing needs to change to be successful: Put your customer in the center! As a child of the Email Age – and of email newsletters and email SPAM – I tried to explain, that today’s marketing has to change dramatically. People get more and more bored by email. Rigid laws demanding explicit Opt-In from recipients limit the reach Marketers are having. What is the solution? Of course Social Media, Twitter and Facebook, the new social channels we are using like email … As in email we are spamming people with our boring marketing messages instead of understanding the core of Social Media (and Social Business). And this core is dialogue, real communication, not pre-written Tweets and event promos.
Don’t get me wrong. There is still a need for email newsletters, for web sites with Marketing messages, for Direct Mail and Advertising, all the nice elements of the Marketing Mix, the owned and paid part of our Marketing. But the social side of the Marketing house, what is called earned media is over-shining paid and owned media. Customers rely more and more on word-of-mouth. They trust their peers and not the nice, glossy web sites and messages. They even quite often make their buying (pre)decisions based on earned media even before they talk to us. We need to much better integrate our tactics, personalize, what we deliver to our customers, deliver relevant and interesting content and we need to be willing to engage with our customers in 1:1 communication or communication in a small group.
This means that we as Marketers have to change our behavior, need to become more Sellers and Influencers. And it means that Sales has to change, too, and become Brand advocates, listeners and communicators out there in the social space, in relevant communities, on Twitter and wherever their potential buyer is hanging around online.
Here is the link to my presentation:
StefanPfeiffer.Blog 
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