Stop shouting. Start listening to your customers.
Faced with sensory overload from overexposure to a blithering hail of marketing messages, your customers are actively tuning out.
The advent of technologies like Tivo, Hulu, Sirius radio, customized web browsers, and RSS readers gives people the freedom to avoid advertising. Platforms like Facebook, You-Tube and Blogs have given them a voice. Your customer's are now empowered to call out bad marketing practices that formerly went unheard.
You can cower in fear at losing control, or you can take advantage of these unprecedented changes. Although the public has disengaged from mass media tactics, they still desire to hear messages relevant to their situations, and to have meaningful brand experiences. Marketing is still relevant, but only the excellent kind will prevail.
In this budding century, success will be dependent on understanding that people are informed, saavy consumers, who want organizations' to engage in conversation and add value to their lives. The age of interruption and annoyance while far from dead, will never work quite the same with an audience who is no longer captive.
Are you engaging and building meaningful relationships with your customers?
