The start of a year is an obvious time to reflect, review and refresh oneself on what happened in the last one. But 2015 is special in many ways. I believe that traditional marketing has finally died this year. Social and digital is mainstream; while other channels exist as additional, for most parts. This change has brought along with it tectonic shifts in the marketplace. Here are two of them:
1. Birds of the same feather flock (and buy) together:
Customers are driven by what people in their social community are buying. Facebook friends and LinkedIn connects are having veto power over messages sent by marketers. Increasingly powerful communities have been formed across B2B channels where people want to understand what their peers are doing. Paucity of time to make their own explorations of needs and the offerings, serious buyers too are turning towards the social media communities to learn
2. Everyone is media:
The power for everyone to be the media- the source as well as broadcaster of messages has been the biggest change enabled by social media. While it is never possible to assess how the efficacy of the messaging can be measured in the case of this shift, the fact remains that any and all messages can be searched by anyone seeking information. Media is no more the forte of media houses alone. Anybody can initiate a message; but how that builds into a powerful stream with debates, comments and opinion-building is what differentiates clutter and substance
3. Communications is two-sided:
Marketers briefly forgot that feedback is an essential ingredient in the communications process. The only sign of credibility of a communications process was if consumers purchased the product. This cycle is simply too long in today’s times of about 30 billion messages per day and technologies like Snapchat which make a 24-hour delay in response sound like a non-response. Communications is a stepped process now where the marketer has to and can measure the impact of previous messages before the new one is launched
