The changing customer buyer experience is putting marketers in the hot seat for engagement
Handing off customers, from marketing to sales to customer service, seems a bit jolting in today's digital world. These days, customers own the online social relationship, and they don't want to be passed around like a hot potato. They demand one group guide them through the customer journey.
More often than not, this group is the digital marketing team.
Death of a salesman
Already there are signs that marketers are pushing out salespeople. Forrester predicts one million B2B sales jobs will disappear in the coming years, as customers research and purchase goods online. At DEMO Traction in San Francisco last week, many startup tech companies said they don't even employ salespeople.
On the post-sale side, a fight has broken out on social media between marketers and customer service pros over control of the customer relationship. Customers don't want to pick up a phone and call customer support anymore. They want answers online, where marketers hold sway yet aren't good at providing customer service.
"Initially seen as an outbound channel for marketing, social media soon also saw consumers seeking customer service, something marketing teams were ill-prepared to handle," writes Forrester analyst Ian Jacobs in a brief entitled Take Social Customer Service Beyond Your Own Walled Garden.
Digital marketers need to see clearly
As marketers expand their influence along the customer journey, they need to know what this really looks like. The holy grail at the end of customer journey is a customer advocate who wields a social networking bullhorn. How to get there? Bluenose, a customer lifecycle management vendor, has put together an infographic that at least gives marketers a big picture.
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.
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As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.
