The new marketing ethos

The marketing landscape has undergone a radical transformation since the advent of the information age. Companies used to be in control of their relationships with customers and could use the traditional sales-funnel model to push the prospects through stages of awareness, familiarity, consideration and eventual purchase.

This model worked well – until new technology and a more empowered global attitude led customers to begin exerting their own preferences about their engagement with companies.

Widespread Internet access and social media now allow prospects to explore brands more comparatively through a wider variety of tools, and consumers are as invested in ongoing engagement with a company as the sale itself. This means that traditional “push” advertising can no longer be relied on, and the days where commercials and billboards funneled sales are gone. Instead, today’s consumers expect to form a relationship with a company throughout the sales cycle.

Marketing is now occurring every time a company interacts with a prospect or a customer and can no longer be viewed as an isolated department.

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Consumers make decisions based on the sum of their interactions with a company, including everything from advertisements seen to interactions with the sales force to product specifications found online.

They often purchase products based on their relationship with the company rather than the product itself, and that makes the company and every employee within it your best instrument for marketing success.

In order to build strong relationships, consumers must be engaged whenever and wherever possible. But many of these interactions – such as calls to customer-service centers, interactions between the sales force and customers, and engagement with the product itself – do not fall within the traditional confines of the marketing department. In order to coordinate efforts across departments and drive sales, marketing must become a companywide effort that crosses over department lines.

Every department shares the end goal of maximizing sales, and the best way to do so is to build a companywide, positive relationship with your customers through a universal marketing ethos.

Instead of keeping your marketing department on the periphery brainstorming generic slogans about quality, bring your team to the production floor to learn the process and acquire the expertise and suggestions of your production team. Incorporating this expertise into your newsletters, commercials, Web content, mailers and sales materials will make your marketing more informative for consumers and more effective for you. Your marketing team can simultaneously develop materials for the production team that will aid them in presenting the process well during events for networking or facility tours.

When your marketing materials reflect the time and expertise of every team, they will be ideally suited to engage consumers, improving key touch points in the sales journey. As previous touch points improve and new points of contact are developed across departments, consumers will come to value and trust your company more and more. Building a relationship is the key to winning over today’s empowered consumers, and your cross-departmental marketing will build trust among consumers and soon start to convert the sales that every department has always aspired to. •

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