As mobile and the Inter­net of Things fur­ther alter the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing land­scape, mar­ket­ing itself is expe­ri­enc­ing pro­found changes. In fact, mar­ket­ing and the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence are becom­ing increas­ing­ly syn­ony­mous with prod­ucts and brands them­selves.

For mar­keters, this means nev­er-end­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate com­pelling expe­ri­ences and then retain con­sumer data to inform and per­son­al­ize future expe­ri­ences for return­ing con­sumers. Look­ing for­ward, experts say they expect mar­ket­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties to sat­u­rate every depart­ment of any giv­en brand in order to tru­ly deliv­er what con­sumers want.

Speak­ing at Adobe Sum­mit, Brad Rencher, senior vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing at Adobe, said the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try is push­ing the bound­aries of where it can go in the “amaz­ing jour­ney of the rein­ven­tion of mar­ket­ing.”

Fur­ther, vir­tu­al­ly any dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence – from deposit­ing checks and pay­ing tax­es to fill­ing out March Mad­ness brack­ets – has changed the way con­sumers inter­act with brands in what Rencher describes as a “pro­found way.”

Why Marketing Must Become A Product

To con­tin­ue to deliv­er com­pelling expe­ri­ences, mar­ket­ing can no longer remain a sin­gle depart­ment with­in an orga­ni­za­tion, but must rather be at the epi­cen­ter, Rencher said.

Mar­ket­ing must also move beyond mar­ket­ing – to the point where mar­ket­ing becomes a prod­uct itself – as brands reimag­ine how they por­tray them­selves across the cus­tomer jour­ney.

That’s because the con­tract between brand and cus­tomer is con­stant­ly being re-eval­u­at­ed, Rencher said. And that means brands and mar­keters must always be think­ing about how to re-engage their tar­gets.

“We’re in an era now where your prod­uct is your mar­ket­ing,” said Adobe CEO Shan­tanu Narayen. “Tra­di­tion­al­ly as mar­keters, com­pa­nies gave you a prod­uct and it was your job to mar­ket it with ques­tions like, ‘How do I posi­tion my brand?,’ ‘What’s my mes­sag­ing?’ and ‘How do I allo­cate my media spend?’ Now it’s broad­ly enough about what the prod­uct is and ‘How can I bring togeth­er the pow­er of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing to dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve the prod­uct expe­ri­ence?’”

In oth­er words, com­pa­nies in indus­tries like retail and trav­el have long known that the ser­vices they deliv­er are syn­ony­mous with their brands, Narayen said. The same is true for dig­i­tal-only ser­vices like Uber: The web­site or app is the brand’s busi­ness. And this is becom­ing true on a broad­er scale.

Rebec­ca Lieb, indus­try ana­lyst at research and strat­e­gy con­sult­ing firm Altime­ter Group, agrees. Mar­ket­ing is becom­ing more of a prod­uct, inspir­ing con­sumers to “engage with a com­pa­ny because its mar­ket­ing is so won­der­ful,” she said.

Rencher agreed.

“The cus­tomer expe­ri­ence has become the brand for orga­ni­za­tions and the best gauge for suc­cess,” he said. “Now, more than ever, the expe­ri­ence is the brand.”

Continuous Customer Experiences

Con­sumers have many more touch­points to inter­act with brands and, as a result, their expec­ta­tions are increas­ing. Rencher said this means brands must cre­ate con­sis­tent cus­tomer expe­ri­ences in which they remem­ber salient details about each con­sumer so that the cus­tomer doesn’t have to start all over from the begin­ning upon each new inter­ac­tion.

Brands must also strive to cre­ate con­tin­u­ous cus­tomer expe­ri­ences that, for exam­ple, allow con­sumers to do their own at-home research and pick up where they left off when they arrive in-store rather than start­ing over again upon arrival.

The under­ly­ing piece that ties this all togeth­er is mobil­i­ty via devices like screens and wear­ables, Rencher said. Mobile is the bridge that gets cus­tomers into a branch or venue and is where mar­keters have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to aug­ment each expe­ri­ence.

“As brands, we have more oppor­tu­ni­ties than ever to delight cus­tomers, but also more oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­sat­is­fy and dis­ap­point,” Rencher said. “Get­ting invit­ed to be on someone’s wrist is a sign of inti­ma­cy and respect.”

Coca-Cola: Liquid And Linked

For­ward-think­ing brands like Coca-Cola cre­ate expe­ri­ences that not only delight, but go beyond tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing chan­nels, Rencher said.

In fact, Lorie Buck­ing­ham, chief devel­op­ment offi­cer at Coca-Cola, said the brand is “try­ing to con­tin­u­ous­ly cre­ate hap­pi­ness expe­ri­ences.”

Said expe­ri­ences include a flag com­posed of cus­tomer self­ies that was unfurled at the 2014 World Cup, giv­ing fans a vir­tu­al pres­ence in Brazil, and enabling each per­son who sub­mit­ted a self­ie to drill down online to see exact­ly where their faces were.

“For us, it’s about how to cre­ate the next new expe­ri­ence,” Buck­ing­ham said. “We can’t rest on our lau­rels. It’s ‘What’s the next new thing to bring every­body togeth­er?’”

She calls this “liq­uid and linked,” which means it “flows like water” because the brand doesn’t con­trol the con­tent, but rather hon­ors it and works with fans to guide it.

“We want every­thing to be unique and spe­cial, but we want some com­mon things – the liq­uid and linked expe­ri­ence. It’s Coke all the way through,” she said. “That’s how we cre­ate true hap­pi­ness expe­ri­ences.”

Hap­pi­ness expe­ri­ences also include ele­ments of sur­prise like Coke’s Hug Me vend­ing machines, which it put on col­lege cam­pus­es dur­ing finals week to dis­trib­ute Cokes in exchange for hugs, Buck­ing­ham said.

In addi­tion, Coke’s Small World Machine con­nect­ed con­sumers in Pak­istan and India, by ask­ing them to relate to each oth­er in some way in order to retrieve a Coke. In addi­tion, Coke’s Freestyle machines, which allow con­sumers to cus­tomize bev­er­ages, also allow the brand to cre­ate known con­sumers by remem­ber­ing a favorite drink mix, which, in turn, means Coke can pro­vide the same expe­ri­ence to that cus­tomer no mat­ter where in the world they access anoth­er Freestyle machine. Reusing and reap­ply­ing data in that fash­ion is what Buck­ing­ham calls the “red thread,” which means Coke can deliv­er a com­mon expe­ri­ence through­out.

“Brands ulti­mate­ly need to make every con­sumer a known con­sumer, or it’s like you’re at a par­ty where every­one has paper bags on their heads,” adds Loni Stark, senior direc­tor of strat­e­gy and prod­uct mar­ket­ing at Adobe.

Starwood Hotels: 360-Degree Experiences

For its part, Star­wood Hotels and Resorts also uses cus­tomer data to pro­vide per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences based on pref­er­ences for floors and check-in and check-out times at any of its loca­tions.

In addi­tion to inno­va­tions like key­less access, Chris Nor­ton, vice pres­i­dent of CRM appli­ca­tions and chan­nel intel­li­gence at Star­wood, said the brand recent­ly announced part­ner­ships with Uber and Delta in order to pro­vide “360-degree expe­ri­ences from the flight to the car to the hotel.”

Fur­ther, iBea­cons can help the brand cre­ate known con­sumers as those users with the SPG app who opt in can be rec­og­nized as they approach the front desk, which means they can be greet­ed by name, Nor­ton said. The brand has also been work­ing on an Apple Watch app, which means users will also be able to open their rooms with­out keys.

Connecting Customers, Experiences, Screens

Only about 10 per­cent of actu­al trans­ac­tions hap­pen in pure dig­i­tal, which means many trans­ac­tions still hap­pen in per­son, accord­ing to Stark. Nev­er­the­less, the cus­tomer that comes into a store is much smarter than cus­tomers were 10 or 20 years ago because they’re doing research online first. So brands must not only think about how to con­nect with these smarter cus­tomers, but also about how to con­nect expe­ri­ences and screens, she said.

Fur­ther, Stark cites fig­ures that show 27 per­cent of cus­tomers are con­sid­er­ing a wear­able.

What’s more, Lieb notes the dif­fer­ence between chan­nels, screens, and devices is erod­ing for con­sumers to the point that it’s “all just media.”

Content: The Unifying Element

Con­tent ties all of these dis­parate touch­points togeth­er.

“Con­tent is the atom­ic par­ti­cle of all mar­ket­ing,” Lieb said. “I believe con­tent will be part of every job descrip­tion in the near future.”

As such, Lieb said brands must fos­ter a cul­ture of con­tent in which one sin­gle depart­ment is not respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing con­tent but rather the entire orga­ni­za­tion inspires and process­es con­tent.

The same is true of mobile, Nor­ton said.

“Mobile isn’t some­thing the guy down the hall does,” he said. “Every job needs to be a mobile job.”

In oth­er words, there’s sort of a con­ver­gence of depart­ments hap­pen­ing in which more team­work is required to cre­ate seam­less, con­tex­tu­al expe­ri­ences.

But, Lieb said, con­tent must be the uni­fy­ing ele­ment in these con­tex­tu­al­ly rel­e­vant expe­ri­ences. Brands must use con­text to help cut through the noise and pro­vide actu­al mean­ing based on data.

She points to Home Depot, which ties its online shop­ping cart to the in-store shop­ping expe­ri­ence with sav­able shop­ping lists that also help con­sumers nav­i­gate stores, as well as Dia­geo, which enabled con­sumers to send per­son­al­ized Father’s Day mes­sages via QR codes on bot­tles, as well as MGM Resorts, which can send noti­fi­ca­tions and/or offers to cus­tomers walk­ing through a venue based on their pref­er­ences, as good exam­ples of con­tex­tu­al­ly rel­e­vant expe­ri­ences.

How do you see dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing evolv­ing?