Engagement – Marketing is a conversation (4Es)
Conversations between people are accelerating. To a very large extent, discussions have moved online to platforms such as Facebook, twitter and YouTube. Many brands are eager to join the conversation but quickly realise that old marketing rules no longer apply. Traditional marketing and advertising just isn’t as effective anymore. To be successful today brands need to engage consumers.
Nowadays, a customer can pass messages from one source to many, through a myriad of social networking opportunities. These can then be passed to the masses through viral marketing activities. Therefore, brands need to start to think of ROI not solely as in ‘return on investment’, but as ‘return on involvement‘ or ‘interaction’. This will enable them to embrace engagement in their marketing strategies.
Brands must dare to say good-bye to the monologue, pushing out messages, and welcome the dialogue, through engaging their customers.
To do this successfully, brands need to bring something of value to the dialogue - something people can appreciate and connect with. In this way your customers will become advocates of your brand and share it with others in their network. This is now more important than ever. As many as 90% of us trust recommendations from people that we know, and 7 out of 10 trust consumer opinions posted online (Nielsen).
Above you can watch clips from Tipp-Ex, Old Spice and Pepsi. These are three brands that understand the power of interaction and how to engage customers in their marketing campaigns. The Pepsi Refresh Project will be presented in a case study later on in this series about the four Es of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity.
