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The key to marketing success: Slow down

December 01, 2011 | Online Marketing

For marketers, the accelerating speed of change along with access to an unprecedented volume of real-time data about products, customers, prospects, competition, and brands can be electrifying and terrifying. It's time to slow down. Slowing down helps you speed up.

For marketers, the dizzying speed of change in just the last year has been both electrifying and terrifying. As marketers, we have access to an unprecedented volume of real-time data about our products, customers, prospects, competition, and brands. We pour over this information, spending hours filtering the data to separate the wheat from the chaff. And, we hope to gain valuable knowledge and uncover the key business insights that will help craft a powerful positioning for our brands. Furthermore, while we are uncovering these nuggets of insight that will help craft a powerful story for our brands, the world around us is speeding up at an exponential rate with an unending array of products, services, channels, platforms, and audience segments.

Universally, marketers know that there has been an explosion of customer segments, products, media vehicles, and distribution channels that have made marketing more complex, costly, and perhaps less effective. Moreover, evidence of the new proliferation lies all around us. Product and service options available to consumers today -- from packaged goods to financial services -- have doubled or even tripled in the last five years. As a result, competition has intensified while mandates for continued growth, despite larger economic issues, have spiraled, leading today's companies to target ever-more demanding customers within ever-smaller segments.

However, in this time of profound change and new age of marketing, we face a real revolution that limits our ability to effectively reach and influence our most valuable audiences. We are no longer in control of the messaging, conversation, information, or platforms. Influence is controlled by customers, prospective customers, and past customers. The job of the new-age marketer is to reach these influencers and engage them in a real discussion. The world is going to decide whether or not our brands have any real value. The customers' rulings will be determined with lightning speed and proclaimed across myriad platforms. Yet, of course, we are still absolutely accountable for the outcome.

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