Today we question what role a marketing department plays for the company…is it an analytics department? A marketing department? An advertising department? A social media office? A digital management department? A sales support department? A branding department? etc…. Perhaps it is all of these and more.
Today I think we can all agree that it is a department focused on what the consumers experience is when interacting with the brand, how we connect with the consumer at all touch points they have with the brand, it monitors and measures consumers contact with the brand, fulfills the consumers needs to be connected to the brand, and takes into consideration all of the above and more.
If you look through the section in our website relevant to the “Brand Silo” it will help explain more thoroughly The Page Group’s philosophy of how marketing and branding today affect and influence the consumer at Every Touch Point the Consumer has with the Brand. http://tpgbrandstrategy.com/services-view/what-is-your-brand-silo/ Check out that section and follow this article….Relevant thoughts can be found in both.
RICHMEYER APRIL 28, 2013
Forget the VP of Marketing, today you need a VP of Customer Experience
How much more can we ask of marketing VP’s ? They are already charged with everything from branding and product planning to research and customer service. While they are busy trying to take data and tell management what it means customer are getting anxious and moving on if you don’t provide a great brand experience. What I suggest is that a lot brands need a VP of Customer Experience to ensure that EVERY brand touchpoint exceeds a customers expectations.
Think about all of your brands touch points with consumers for a second; you have customer service, packaging, advertising, social media, POP displays, packaging, and your website among others. Today you just can’t create a website and go live without doing some usability testing to ensure that it meets your audiences expectations. In addition one website is not enough for the micro-segments of consumers. You need a variety of homepages and navigational flows to address each major segment and you need to keep improving the flow as you learn more and more about how your users are coming to your site.
Then there is social media. Besides the how and why you need to put a lot more thought into how a Facebook page might integrate with your overall brand marketing plan and how to measure success and ensure that your social media stays relevant to today’s time compressed consumers.
This is why you need someone who focuses primarily on the customer experience. Their job is to ensure that consumers have an excellent experience with your brand and to keep setting the bar higher as you learn more from your audience and what consumers expect. However this position also has to be strategic in that they have to ensure that an investment in a great customer experience is measurable and helps drive business/brand objectives. They have to be able to look at your brand from the outside in and convince people that brands are media and to keep the conversation going requires a lot of work and resources.
A recent study by IBM indicated that the number one challenge marketers face it taking data and turning it into actionable items that can be implemented. I’ll take it a step further and say that there is an additional challenge of doing it quickly without having to have weeks worth of meetings and 5 different versions of a Power Point deck.
Companies that invest NOW in customer experiences are going to find that they are rewarded with loyal customers. They are also going to learn that it’s not always about price and that constant promotions do not necessarily make good marketing. The customer experience position could quickly become one of the most important positions within your organization and a valuable resource for learning what customers expect of you and your brand.
TPG Social Media