NEW — 4-Pillars for Digital Strategy

by | Aug 8, 2017 | White Papers

The year was 1969. The Apollo 11 mission captured and held the attention of millions around the world as the U.S. embarked upon the world’s first-ever manned landing on the moon. Part of this mission—something that would become routine and tolerable over the subsequent lunar missions—was the loss of radio transmission for an hour as the spacecraft circled what has often been called “the dark side of the moon.” During this time, no one on Earth had any information about what was happening with the isolated command module.

Houston We Have a Problem

Today, marketers are experiencing a similar phenomenon. As CMOs seek to optimize demand at the top of the funnel in a highly complex Omni-channel environment of consumer behaviors, their pursuit of control over the process most often reaches a failure point. Previous customers and new leads often slip to the “dark side of the moon” during the consumer search process. In mapping the customer journey, CMOs find that the lines of communication and engagement are broken as consumers—who are searching online—evaluate alternatives, reject original choices, and evaluate new choices in a protracted search process.

Consider these divergent research findings for consumer search:

  1. 44% of people go directly to Amazon to start their product searches. (Marketing Land)
  2. When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%) when compared to social, direct mail, and other channels. (Data & Marketing Association)
  3. Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely (95%) to follow a brand via social networking. (Marketing Sherpa).
  4. 49% of consumers say they choose stores over the web because they want “to take items home immediately. ”(Retail Dive)

The buying process is unquestionably complex. During the search process, consumers are experimenting with a number of unique buying channels and moving quickly between options to improve access to product information, delivery, and competitive pricing.

In KPMG’s 2017 Global Online Consumer Report, researchers explain that advances “in technology, logistics, payments and trust—coupled with increasing internet and mobile access and consumer demand for convenience—have created a US$1.9 trillion global online shopping arena, where millions of consumers no longer ‘go’ shopping, but literally ‘are’ shopping—at every moment and everywhere.”

Which Application Could Help?

To aid marketers, technology companies have rushed to innovate applications that provide better and more advanced marketing tools. However, this explosion of new functionality creates another challenge for the marketer: “Which applications are most useful…or even valid for my business?”

Martech is the answer,but the burgeoning Martech landscape has marketing leadership heads spinning.

The Big 4

The good news is that despite the complexity, there are only four “channels” through which consumers are conducting their searches:

  1. Website/Online Search
  2. E-mail Marketing
  3. Friends & Family (Social Media)
  4. In-Store Experience

It is these four channels that define a “technology template,” a way of assessing which applications are strategic to your business. If the application keeps your brand in front of the searching consumer in one or more of these channels, there is a “fit” — it holds a strategic place in your marketing arsenal.

For Smart Marketers, There Is No “Dark Side”

In January 2017, a Forbes article was published, entitled, “Why There’s No Such Thing as the Dark Side of the Moon.” The author, an instructor and flight controller at NASA, makes an important clarification about this commonly used catchphrase: “It’s a phrase mistakenly used by people when they mean to say ‘far side of the moon.’ There is no ‘dark side.’ The moon receives [an] equal amount of sunlight on each side during the lunar day.”

Following this analogy into the life of a CMO eager to create and maintain a position of brand influence across all four channels, there are a number who have stumbled upon the reality that there is always a way to maintain communication—to tether consumers as they bounce back and forth between the four channels.

Watch for our next article as we review the best strategies for identifying, evaluating, selecting, and optimizing the best technology to keep consumers from becoming lost in space.

About NovaLex Consulting

NovaLex, Latin for “new plan,” is a strategy and marketing consultancy that assists companies seeking to ignite or accelerate growth. An enterprise of self-described “marketing architects,” NovaLex combines art and science – deep data analytics for targeting with data mining for powerful creative branding to drive growth.

The proven methodology, blending hyper-targeting, advanced marketing technology and creative branding, places each client’s brand in the consideration set throughout the customer journey. This forward-thinking approach ensures that our client’s brands are in the final consideration set to cost-efficiently generate more leads, drive conversions, and elevate sales growth.

NovaLex team members have won multiple American Marketing Association EFFIE Awards for sales effectiveness, a Gold Lion at the Cannes Film Festival and have elevated the business of every client served.

For more information, visit us at www.novalexconsulting.com or call 214-395-5153.

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