Now it’s about Consumer Engagement
Marketing area of the business has already been ‘digitized’, at least to some extent, for few years now. Digital Marketing by means of e-mail, social media, and the web is reasonably common and increasing quickly. Print marketing budget has been reduced considerably in last one year. Businesses are assigning budget for digital marketing and getting the similar or improved outcomes at lower marketing expense.
Although Digital Marketing is undoubtedly better than conventional media but still it comes with few limitations. Even in digital marketing strategy, approach is mainly Business to Consumer or B2C. In the digital age, what’s in fact required, and absent, is a Customer to Business or C2B strategy which results in a deeper engagement between the business and customer. It is a kind of interaction that can obtain a great business insight associated to customer perception about the organization and their product or services.
Let’s take a look on limitations with digital marketing that comes up in the absence of consumer engagement to business strategy.
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is quite well known and all of us receive promotional emails. Below are three short falls of email marketing:
- Blind Emails – Same communication reaches to all recipients irrespective of their profile and inclination.
- Impact Measurement – Campaign reach is generally measured on the basis read receipts. It should be based on reactions to the email.
- Lack of Business Insight – It is exceptionally hard to obtain significant business insights since there is normally no backward channel from the customer to business. Even if customers answer, organization should have different application to get responses and do analysis through analytics engines. It can be an expensive strategy.
2. Social Media
Sponsored posts related to product or service on social media platform like Facebook and twitter is very common. Though, even with a platform like Facebook, engagement is limited to like, share and comment. For example, an organization has 1 million likes on its company page. What next? What should be the next move? The condition is same with other social platforms too. A company can only find retweet or favourite tweet. But it stops here. It does not go beyond this in the absence of consumer to business strategy.
3. Web
Brands are having web presence since more than fifteen years now. But, again mainly B2C communication strategy has been applied. Web has been primarily used for forwarding the information and data to customers. Though, quite a few website has feedback option available on their web page through that they try to gather customer information. However feedback is generally limited to site itself. Feedback hardly ever reaches at the point where consumer shares their opinion about brand or product or service. It is enormously hard to produce significant customer insights that can assist the organization in their marketing approach.
Way forward should be up-gradation of conventional digital marketing by concentrating on customer interaction instead of customer communication. Organizations should adopt modern strategies and applications that offer ways to gather customer insights. It should be done with customer permission. Digital marketing limitations can be defeated, If it can be executed in transparent way. Also, companies should make it enjoyable to customers to contribute in interactions. Consumer to business path should be considered while making marketing strategy. Promotion plan, implementation and impact measurement should be based on business insights produced from customer engagement.