A good look at your web­site ana­lyt­ics or a chat with your Con­sumer Intel­li­gence team, if you’re lucky enough to have one, will tell you that your cus­tomers are com­pli­cat­ed. But even with­out look­ing at the data, every mar­keter knows this because we’re all con­sumers, and our own pur­chas­ing behav­ior is also com­pli­cat­ed. This com­pli­ca­tion, how you want to look at it and how you get your com­pa­ny to act because of it, can be the dif­fer­ence between a busi­ness that mere­ly com­petes, and one that out­per­forms the com­pe­ti­tion and wins.

As con­sumers we con­scious­ly and sub­con­scious­ly get exposed to adver­tis­ing on broad­cast media like TV and radio. We see adver­tise­ments in the press and online, search, read our favorite blogs, see in-store pro­mo­tion­al mes­sages on pack­ag­ing and point-of-sales, and talk to friends and fam­i­ly, to name but a few of our media inter­ac­tions.

To make things more com­pli­cat­ed for the mar­keter and bet­ter for the con­sumer, the dig­i­tal media we con­sume is no longer a desk­top only expe­ri­ence. We use phones and tablets more, and apps more. We don’t even use these devices for the same things. We may research while on the train on our phones and com­plete our pur­chas­es lat­er on a desk­top device.

All of this means keep­ing track of your cus­tomer seg­ments and mar­ket­ing to them is far from straight­for­ward. If you’re a senior mar­keter it’s all high­ly incon­ve­nient. After all, it’s your job to know and keep track of your cus­tomers, and to be in con­trol of your brand, prod­ucts, ser­vices, and sales growth.

The 3 Ages Of Marketing Simplified

Back in the day, all you need­ed was a killer above the line and media agency and a decent media bud­get to work won­ders.

Then a sec­ond age of mar­ket­ing man­age­ment was ush­ered in. New media and jobs were cre­at­ed. You need­ed on and offline teams, SEO, PPC, dis­play, social media, PR, con­tent mar­ket­ing, affil­i­ate, and CRM experts. Not to men­tion work­ing close­ly with chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cers (CTOs).

Today you don’t just need all of those teams, you need them to work togeth­er in inte­grat­ed teams. You also need data and tech­nol­o­gy. Lots of it.

Is this the third age of mar­ket­ing? There’s a thought.

Solutions For Complication

Luck­i­ly the solu­tions are every­where. Agen­cies, con­sul­tants, in-house teams. Thou­sands of soft­ware plat­forms and data sources. There’s even a new job role emerg­ing to help bring clar­i­ty to what can be a big blur. The chief mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gist. It’s cer­tain­ly easy to see why this role was need­ed and is so obvi­ous­ly use­ful.

And it’s in soft­ware, data, and peo­ple that “get it,” that we can all find respite. If we know the right ques­tions, and let the data we now have access to tell the right sto­ries, we can begin to see the wood for the trees. We can cre­ate a plan that works, pro­vide teams with direc­tion, and cre­ate KPIs which allow for tac­ti­cal adjust­ments and con­trol.

In fact, with the right peo­ple, data and soft­ware, your con­sumers can car­ry on being incon­ve­nient­ly com­pli­cat­ed. In fact, the more com­pli­cat­ed they are and bet­ter you’re equipped to deal with that com­pli­ca­tion, the big­ger your com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.

I’m not say­ing it’s easy. In a bizarre way, I’m actu­al­ly say­ing you don’t want it to be. Oth­er­wise all of your com­peti­tors would be doing it. But with the right team and tech­nol­o­gy part­ners it can be achieved.

Which reminds me of a Seth Godin book, “The Dip”. The big idea I took from this book is to know whether your cur­rent plan is going to suc­ceed. Stop and piv­ot if you think there’s a chance you’re doing it wrong.

If you think you’re on the right path, even if it is hard work, don’t give up. Lean in. If it’s hard for you, it’s hard for every­one. Few will make it through to the oth­er side.

Stop And Pivot Or Push On?

There are four areas I sub­tly prod to gauge whether a busi­ness is set up to win. How senior mar­keters answer usu­al­ly tells me the extent of the chal­lenge and whether a piv­ot is need­ed or whether this is a ‘lean in’ moment.

1. Digital Strategy Documents

You’ve had experts pro­vide you with doc­u­ments full of rec­om­men­da­tions on how per­for­mance can be improved. If you can’t action most of it because of tech­ni­cal, polit­i­cal, or resource rea­sons, then you need to stop. Inter­nal teams and agen­cies are like­ly to be in a con­stant hold­ing pat­tern, com­pro­mis­ing at every turn.

If you don’t have strate­gies that are formed from your cus­tomer data insights, mar­ket, and oppor­tu­ni­ty, then stop.

2. Business Intelligence Shared

To man­age dig­i­tal chan­nels opti­mal­ly you need teams to pass on intel­li­gence derived from spe­cial­ist area to oth­er stake­hold­er teams. Exam­ples of this include:

• Paid search data help­ing the SEO and con­tent team shape their strate­gies.
• Organ­ic search insights inform­ing paid search, dis­play, and affil­i­ate com­merce.
• Cre­ative teams receiv­ing insights from social teams on con­tent that res­onates.
• PR teams get­ting lists of jour­nal­ists that don’t just write, they’re get­ting read.
• Con­tent teams get­ting feed­back on their con­tents per­for­mance.
• PR teams review­ing con­tent in the search results that is hurt­ing sales and the brand.

There are many oth­ers, but you’ll get the idea and now be able to see whether the syn­er­gies are there to be found and exploit­ed. If your teams aren’t real­ly work­ing togeth­er (I say real­ly as some teams are great at hav­ing meet­ings and pre­tend­ing) then stop.

3. Solid Multi-touch Funnels in Analytics

Hav­ing sol­id ana­lyt­ics data that informs you about how dif­fer­ent chan­nels and touch­points are con­tribut­ing towards sales helps you eval­u­ate how chan­nels inter­act.

4. C‑level support

If the peo­ple at the top want to win, the cor­po­rate struc­ture, dig­i­tal team size and exper­tise, tech­nol­o­gy stack, bud­gets, and part­ners need to be capa­ble of achiev­ing your ambi­tion. If they aren’t, then stop. You need to get them on board.

Do you rec­og­nize any of the above as sit­u­a­tions or chal­lenges you’re fac­ing? What do you see as the big chal­lenges faced from the incon­ve­nient­ly com­pli­cat­ed con­sumer?