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Imagine buying a bunch of blocks already put together in a finished product. Think how hard it would be to go back and look at the process and all the steps involved. This is the scenario I want you to think about today.
I constantly wrestle with the question of automation. What if every campaign were completely automated, where I could see who saw my message, what information they clicked on, how much time they spent on our site, what was the last page they were on. A lot of this information is already availble to marketers and some people are very good at managing this process.
I know a few years ago, I went to one of those automated Twitter Followers where I quickly grew my Twitter base to over 20,000 followers. The piece that was missing was these 20,000 followers did not translate to $$ and in the end I had to peel back, but I really just had to almost start over.
Over the past 6 months, I have learned that if you take time and actually “touch the data” by focusing on specific people, accounts or industries, you will see measured success and more $$. This concept will be talked about more as technology continues to change at a rapid pace and the whole process of buying products and services continues to change before our eyes.
I bring up this concept because I believe we are really at an infancy standpoint when it comes to understanding how people are receiving their information and how they make decisions. I think the decision-making process for consumers is much more thorough and people look to find solutions acrosss many platforms. Here is an example.
If I were to buy a new camera, I would probably check out a few retail sites, maybe some images on Pinterest, maybe a search on Facebook, maybe a search on Twitter and also an advanced search on Google or Bing. When the final decision is made, what was the deciding factor? Where did I learn the most about price and quality?
If you are the manufacturer of this camera and they ultimately come to your site, how do you clearly know where that final decision was made? Hopefully, you are asking your buyers this question and getting some type of response. However, that response could have been influenced by one of the sites listed above.
The point here is that maybe it is time to look closer at our marketing promotions and start looking at ways to manage the decision-making process a little closer, by breaking it up a bit or introducting information on platforms to see where the most traffic is occuring. It is extremely hard to do this if you are trying to automate this whole process across platforms. By breaking up the process and managing it a little closer, you might be able to see different channels that are more effective.
Something to consider in 2014.
photo credit: Michael of Scott via photopin cc
