We Fall or Rise on How We Keep Clients’ Customers
That buzz you hear—a constant rumbling burr of white noise that we’re so accustomed to, we take it for granted—is the steady stream of marketing messages that hum around us all day every day. On multiple media devices, on countless outdoor billboards, bus cards and posters, in TV program ad placements, on film and radio and online—we see or hear marketing messages at an estimated pace of 500-600 exposures per person daily.
All of that messaging seems to be great for the economy. But just because we can advertise, should we? And to what effect are we doing all of this messaging?
Desperate Much?
The glut of messages is partly due to the increase in channels by which advertising and marketing may now be served. Sadly, it also reflects the desperation with which a much-altered advertising industry must now pursue the ears, eyeballs and attention of potential customers.
That desperation has led marketers away from an important consideration in all messages: remembering that they’re trying to speak to and with real-live people.
The Message Is Everything
This from eMarketer (the italics are ours):
“Privacy and security are critical to mobile users, most of whom have some understanding of how revealing their mobile data—including location—can be to advertisers, publishers, governments and other internet users. And for many, that means not using location services at all, potentially diminishing their mobile experiences.”
Apparently, people using the apps find them of so little value, they’re fine with turning off location-based services. From the perspective of the app creators and marketers who paid for the apps, customers are choosing “diminished experience.” But that—along with countless other remarks by marketing media, marketing and advertising bloggers, webinar/seminar moderators, and plain old ad folk—typifies how much we think about our own goals… while completely ignoring the wants, needs and concerns of those “users.”
I put “users” in quotes for a reason. We, as marketing-focused business professionals, are continually focused on the customer or end-user. But we need to remember that those customers are people first, not just data points or traffic or sales quotas. That “diminished user experience” cited in the eMarketer article ignores what users actually want—an experience they determine, not one controlled by marketers’ apps or forced on them by advertising-driven media.
Their wants have nothing to do with what we marketers want from them. And they’re going to do people-type things, like decide they’re seeing too many spammy ad messages on their mobile devices, and turn those off. Or decide they like viewing TV programming without commercials (DVRs), or with just one or two commercials (streaming). They’ll come late to the movie theater so they can miss the ads that precede the trailers, and ignore the cookie-based ads that trail them around the internet… when they allow cookies at all. They’ll delete in-feed ads from Facebook and Twitter, and only like or retweet something if they get a great discount or freebie, even for brands they favor. In short, people can now selectively receive advertising, and many people choose to tell ads to butt out.
They’re Missing Out!
Yes, people who turn off location-based services may “miss out” on local news, weather and relevant offers, even where they have downloaded apps to serve those very things. But we advertising professionals and our clients need to remember two things:
- People want to control their own phones/laptops/tablets, how they use these devices—and who gets to know that.
- For many, concerns about privacy, security and being tracked without their knowledge far outweigh the perceived benefits of allowing marketers, app servers—and legal authorities, and government surveillance, and hackers—access to their smart devices.
Also, beyond the, “you’re missing out if you’re not letting us serve you location-based marketing messages and offers and coupons and deals” concern, we sense the panicked undertones of, “If everyone turns off location-based access, we can’t serve ads, and then what do we tell our clients?” And that’s where forgetting we’re dealing with people more than “customers” really hurts us.
The gap between how marketers continue to market, and how today’s media-savvy, on-their-own-terms “audiences” respond, has widened in the past five years. The audiences we hope to speak to no longer passively sit in front of the TV sets in their living rooms. They’re free to not just tune out, but entirely turn off marketing messages, and do. Increasingly they find us when they want us, and don’t want us to find them except on their own terms.
The harder our clients push for results, the less we can deliver, because people—the “users”—have made us the passive ones, waiting to be found by an interested person when they decide we have something they want.
This circles us back to the beginning: retaining customers is the strongest route to attracting new customers. Serve current customers well in ways they like and will opt in to receive, and you can build a base of advocates who will do your selling for you. You’ll also acquire the kind of reputation that attracts people who want what you can provide, not because they saw an ad, but because they read an online review, or received a recommendation via social networks, or read a wonderful blog piece about your product or service. Increasingly, how we keep and grow clients’ customer bases—the people who like the brand, perhaps even love it, and those who are willing to join those ranks—is what will make the difference moving forward. Companies that continue to push marketing will see ever-shrinking results. Companies that focus on their customers/users will continue to rise.
Help your clients be companies that users want to seek out. Find ways to enhance experiences for regular customers so they advocate for the company or brand. Your focus on delivering positive experiences in every interaction will ultimately amplify experiences… preventing your marketing work from delivering diminishing returns.
