We recently learned all about message delivery in the age of anti-advertising while attending a Business Marketing Association of Chicago Marketing Innovators luncheon where Neal Campbell, EVP and CMO, and Lauren McCadney, Digital Engagement and Social Media Director, from CDW spoke to us about what it’s going to take for marketers to connect with our customers. In this new era, customers actively tune out our messaging and have a number of resources at their fingertips that they are using to proactively conduct research before ever contacting businesses directly.
Here are three key points we took away on what marketers need to embrace in order to break through the anti-advertising barrier.
Meet Me On The Web: The New Buyer Journey
Campbell and McCadney led off by discussing how the buyer journey has been completely revolutionized alongside growing Internet penetration. A typical buyer journey now looks like the following:
- Search (web)
- Community (web)
- Search (web)
- Reviews (web)
- Sales: to validate
- Buy
“People are becoming smarter at the cart,” McCadney states, “and with nearly 60% of the buyer’s journey complete before they even reach out to sales, we can see they are spending that time educating themselves before they even contact a company for validation or make a purchase.” The majority of these consumers are beginning their search online (in fact, Google reports that smartphones are now the most common starting place for online activities) and will then turn to online peers for help in understanding the pros and cons of the product or service they are researching. All of this action is taken online, prior to engaging with your company.
So how do we stay relevant in a process that is dominated by digital research? McCadney asserts we need to delve into the customer journey by digitizing their experience with our brands. “Engaging Digital Natives,” she continues, “requires connecting with them on their platform of choice, and in the right spaces on these platforms, in order to drive greater brand consideration.” Marketers working to keep brands in the conversation throughout the buyer’s journey will help drive consistent consideration and return sales to being seen as another research tool, not simply a pit-stop toward the end of their decision.
People Trust People
Campbell and McCadney spoke about how, in order to stay relevant throughout the customer journey, we not only have to meet our customers on the web but also engage with them at a human level – where their trust lies.
Today 90% of people do not trust advertising, yet 92% trust recommendations from people they know. And another 70% trust opinions posted online – from people they may not even know at all! Campbell claims that, “As marketers, our task becomes making our people human and making sure they have the tools to be human in order to build this trust with our customers and engage with them throughout their purchase journey.” For many businesses, what is more human that voice? Ensuring we are available to engage in conversation with our customers can be the difference in whether we get their business.
Create Brand Advocates: Customers To Build Customers
The discussion also turned to how we can play off the trust people have with one another. Marketers must engage customers not only where they are online – using search, social media, and communities – but use the relationships they have built to our advantage by letting them do the talking for us. CDW did this very simply by incorporating reviews – both positive and negative – onto their website, bringing in the feedback their customers have and sharing it in a controlled space. Amplifying their voice will create advocates for your business that prospects already trust. By doing this marketers can continue to break down the anti-advertising barrier, bringing humanness to business and another way to build trust with our customers.
At the end of the day, Campbell and McCadney’s message was about being human. In a growing anti-advertising culture, we as marketers are driven to engage with our customers on a social, human level to grow an environment of trust and acceptance. We first need to meet them where they are (on the web) and then engage in a genuine way (by being human).
And we want to ask, what is more human than voice? With smartphone ownership growing (there will be an estimated 220 million by 2018) and increasingly being used as a starting point for online activities, it is that much easier for people who are researching to use their smartphone as an actual phone. Incorporating click-to-call functionality in our mobile marketing and tracking inbound calls will help us stay relevant in the buyer’s journey and bring us one step closer to voice conversation and being human.
