Igniting Customer Connections: Fire Up Your Company's Growth By Multiplying Customer Experience & Engagement

Chapter 1The New Marketing LandscapeTo Survive Here, You Need to Be Able to Deal with Complexity and Speed

Marketing successfully to an ever-shifting audience is always challenging, but even more so in a time of more and less. We have more channels for connecting with people, dozens of customer touch points, mountains of consumer data, and a global reach. But we also have closer scrutiny of marketing spend, a focus on consumer privacy, and less time to make critical decisions and deliver a message to a much more empowered (and possibly jaded) audience. In an era of Big Data and advanced analytics, of multiple screens and marketing-intolerant customers who can shut them off, what's the best path ahead? And how do we know what factors are creating customer engagement and driving profitability—not just today, but over time?

Let's start by taking a look at the megatrends or tectonic shifts that have changed the way we produce and access information. Then we'll explore how these shifts have changed the way consumers behave.

Tectonic Shift #1: More Media, Devices, and Disruption

For years, access to media meant TV, radio, billboards, and other content produced by large, centralized entities sending down content from the upper echelons of advertising, marketing, and communication. Now media is in the palm of every consumer's hand, and everyone is a producer. Smartphones, tablets, and more devices have enabled a major disruption in the flow of information, moving it from broadcast ...