Customer First - Not Data First
A true story… short… and one that points out the issues with so called targeting online.
I say so-called because there is targeting and… there is targeting.
It's easy to find me, yes, but why and with what is the real question.
Once upon a time…
My daughter and son-in-law went way for the weekend. The spa they stayed at had a soap that my daughter really liked for its fragrance.
A few weeks ago my son-in-law decides… what a nice Mother’s Day gift (they have a daughter) and started searching for it online. He used his personal computer, his work computer (his own legal practice), his Mom’s computer and finally bought it at some boutique site.
Meanwhile my daughter begins to notice that the soap is following her…on her computer…everywhere. Had it shown up once or twice she wouldn’t have noticed. But it got really annoying as no matter what she did the soap was stuck to her.
Then it struck her and ruined the surprise.
But I imagine that it’s also ruining some poor soap site’s investment budget as they badgered her, without any thought or plan, not knowing that the gift had been purchased and that weepy had turned creepy.
I have written about this many times, but the latest iteration of the spoiled surprise made me realize, once again, just how little insight goes into programmatic targeting and just how much real marketing is being sacrificed for nothing more than digitaling.
The joke is that Amazon are real marketers. They experiment with classical marketing paradigms. Of course they are a digital business, but they are also a physical business and they also have to fulfill and deliver your purchase…another powerful marketing moment.
Remember: Digital is everything but not everything is digital. In this case if you are a marketer you are by definition a digitaler, but if you think digital first you are a mere digitaler and you will lose.
People first… be a marketer. Understand the serendipity of humans. Don’t ruin my daughters next surprise gift… listen:
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him/her and sells itself”
Peter Drucker
And there you have it. We might “know” more today than ever before but we are understanding ever less.
What do you think?
Story Telling | SEO | B2B Marketing | Social Media | Email Marketing
6 年Leo Philip,PMP? this made for such a refreshing read and is so in line with all that we're striving for at our firm. Thank you for this short, sweet and brilliantly worded work David!
Marketing Director | Branding Enthusiast
6 年It's part of digital era. For instance, 10 years ago it was part of marketing strategy, nowadays most business units use it as a strategy on itself. Consumer's behavior is changing, we no longer belong to our self, we share private information and therefore get tracked by third parties. it is like a part of our DNA, humans from globalization era can not resist it if not living into the wild.?
Digital Marketing | eCommerce | Content Management | UX/UI | CRM | CMS | Online retailers | Customer Experience | Project Manager | GDPR | SCRUM
6 年If you focus too much on data you loose the real subject of your marketing investment: customer's (people's) satisfaction. On one side you can reach immediate results, but it might not be a good strategy to build a long term loyalty relationship.
Research + Social Influence Design
6 年Yes, and people-first is more than customer-first. Data is a tool and only as useful as the people using it to solve problems. How better to understand your customer and be audience-first than through smart and creative applications of data?
Visual Arts / Senior / Concept / Designer / Creative Art Director / Head of Art
6 年I think that in the digital age, people are so freaking focused in the results that they don't let the magic happens. It's a long way better to enchant the costumer with something attractive that keeping pushing ads every they look to their phones. The beauty of the positive results is when it simply happens as a consequence of a good job, not when you create something to reach it.