We’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years debating the future of marketing.
I did a short AMA (ask me anything) yesterday with the folks over at inbound.org. Note that a lot of the questions were aimed at social media: what tools I should be using, what strategies definitely work, how do I get people to care enough to use it.
I’ve got answers to those (whatever supports your business goals, no such thing, get them involved in the process).
But the real discussion on the future of marketing probably isn’t as sexy as you might like it to be.
Social emerged as a viable contributor to the scene about 7 or 8 years ago now. Since then, we’ve run circles around ourselves trying to figure out which channels work best, whether we should be on Facebook, how we can “create great content” like we’re being told to…
But all of that is secondary to what I believe the true role of marketing is in a modern business.
A successful marketer today spends their time creating alignment and cohesion across the business to create a customer experience that’s consistent with what the company aspires to be.
It’s that simple, and that difficult.
The most important thing to remember is that social technologies and their capabilities are the catalyst for change, they’re not the solution to the problem. Their capabilities are what shine a spotlight on our vulnerabilities as businesses, namely the disconnects between our contrived brand and our customers’ expectations of us, and the stifled, process-driven flows of information inside our own companies that largely get in the way of us doing a better job of communicating with each other and with our customers.
Social things can be part of the overall solution, sure, but they’re not the answer. The true answers are much more broad-reaching and complex.
We have to understand data without getting ourselves buried in the idea that Big Data will be our salvation, lest we burn time and energy chasing the wrong analytical windmills.
We have to shape a consistent customer experience and give them a voice in how we work while still aligning that with a business strategy that they may not have the whole picture for, and trying to home in on the right kind of customer for our business.
We have to unlock internal community and communication so that we can shake off the industrial-era chains that dictate efficiency above all, and instead make our companies more modular and free people up to collaborate, innovate, make agile decisions, and maneuver at the speed of the ever-changing market.
We have to guide a business culture that wants all of those things and bridges the gap between risk management and open innovation in a way that keeps the doors open but the ideas flowing and changing.
In a world of content noise, proliferation of social networks, splintered conversations…the only true marketing advantage today lies with how you treat people, and how focused you are on creating a truly outstanding customer experience.
I could go on, but the point is this.
The future of marketing is not in making our native advertising more effective. Think bigger.
We are today’s most capable, most well-positioned change agents.
(NB: I’m going to do a talk on that at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston this fall, so if you’re not registered, you should come and we can talk more about it).
We’re the ones that can become the glue in our organizations to bring together disciplines that may have forgotten how to work with and collaborate with each other. We’re able to capture and tell stories better and more effectively than ever. And we’re able to open up the gates for conversation and discussion with our most important stakeholders – our customers and our employees – in ways that we’ve never been able to do before.
So, go ahead and spend a few minutes thinking about what you’re going to put on Twitter this week.
Then put that the hell down and worry about how you’re going to shape a business or a team or even a project that showcases the values of a progressive, agile company in a modern digital world.
You want ROI? Start there.
