Marketing Governance

One of the major challenges facing enterprise marketers is to create and maintain meaningful engagement with potential buyers who are more self-sufficient than ever. The proliferation of communications channels and the widespread availability of information about almost every conceivable product and service have changed how both consumers and business buyers learn about products and services and make purchase decisions.

Today’s buyers exhibit two distinctive behaviors that create challenges for enterprise marketers. First, the buying process used by potential customers is less predictable than in the past. A recent survey of over 7,000 consumers by the Corporate Executive Board found that the traditional purchase funnel (which depicts a buying process in which consumers move from awareness to interest to desire to action, while narrowing their options along the way) no longer describes how most consumers actually buy. Read More

More than ever, marketing is under pressure to help acquire and retain customers while operating within tighter budgets. At the same time, customer engagement is emerging as an important concept as customers increasingly interact with companies across many channels. Higher customer engagement is seen as an indication of the emotional connection with the brand which correlates with business success.

A better customer experience is becoming an increasingly important way to differentiate for companies. Customer engagement plays a large role in the overall customer experience. We believe that customer engagement will continue to rise in importance as competition increases and switching costs decrease. With engagement becoming a key behavioral indicator, organizations will need to be able to link points of customer engagement with bottom-line improvements. Read More

‘Marketing as we know it is dead. But there is a better way. Alterian gives you the tools to understand, create and deliver in the new world of customer engagement.

Software giant Alterian introduces its four different marketing software solutions to help todays marketers navigate the complicated world of customer engagement. The underlying idea for each of these solutions is of course the customer. If you listen to what they are saying, you can adjust your marketing activities accordingly and create personalized, relevant content delivered at the right time.

The Campaign Manager is the broadest solution, designed for managing entire campaigns. Knowledge is power and by understanding the audience, you can adjust and optimize campaigns to create maximum effect across multiple channels. A more specific solution is the Dynamic Messenger, which analyzes online behavior with regard to email, allowing you to personalize and finetune email messages. The Content Manager solution promises to help you create interactive and relevant websites, that allow business users to engage customers when they visit. And finally, of course there is a social media solution: SM2, which allows you to analyze how consumers talk about your brand, and become part of the conversation.

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Sometimes its good to remember that marketing while of course a deeply creative profession and a source of operational challenges is about persuading people to buy things. The key to happiness lies in buying this product, advertising tells us, and sometimes we tell ourselves that. While having money does not necessarily make you happy, spending it in the right way can.

Take a look at this lovely infographic by Ravi Iyer, which shows that buying experiences makes people happier than buying products. Going skiing, going to the movies or reading a book is more satisfying than buying new things. So how are you going to spend(!) your free time this weekend? .

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