Saul Medeiors Affiliate Marketing: Welcome to Marketing In The Engagement Economy

Author: Steve Lucas

You’ve heard it a thousand times: digital transformation has shifted the way companies do business. As a part of this shift, buyer expectations have changed. As a marketer, there are dozens of ways to reach your customer, but the trick is finding out how, when, and why they want to be engaged. Now, a thoughtful, personal, seamless, experience is what customers crave.

The Engagement Economy

That is the idea behind the “Engagement Economy”—a digital future where everyone and everything is connected. It embodies the fundamental shift in the relationships between buyers and sellers, but extends across an entire organization to include customers, prospects, employees, and partners. What’s important for you to know is that if your company does not embrace and adopt transformation in the Engagement Economy, it won’t be long for this world.

Companies that don’t transform risk being outpaced by new, digitally native brands who are able to give customers the experiences they crave. Think of Blockbuster Video. They had a huge brand presence, with over 10,000 physical locations in the U.S. alone, but when Netflix came on the scene, Blockbuster couldn’t adapt to the new model of renting videotapes, DVDs, and music. In 24 months, Blockbuster was gone. Why? Because Netflix offered the customer an experience they actually wanted! And, that’s just one example of a digital native organization. Think of some of today’s most talked-about brands: AirBnB, Uber, etc. We love them because of the experience they provide us, yet neither of them own any real estate or cars.

But not every company is a digital native. In fact, most aren’t. If you’re like the majority of companies out there, you are racing to implement a digital infrastructure that enables you to listen to, learn from, and engage with your customers. So how do you do it?

Drive Wantedness

Success in the Engagement Economy hinges on, well, engagement. Imagine that! Digital transformation, is not about processes, technology, or even sales and marketing—it’s about transforming your organization at its core to create experiences that feel real and human and are founded on trust and care.

In the Engagement Economy, it is all about building personalized, authentic relationships with your customers and driving the idea of wantedness. Wantedness is a really compelling concept based on research by Wunderman, and it’s the degree to which a brand proves their commitment to earning a customers’ business across every touchpoint—across the entire customer journey. In a me-centric world, where consumers expect us, the marketer, to

understand and communicate to them when they want, how they want, on the right channel, and at exactly the right moment. Being wanted is essentially the result of driving an authentic buyer experience.

Digital Transformation with Impact

So where do you go when you’re faced with the need, or maybe paranoid fear, to digitally transform your organization to drive wantedness and participate fully in the Engagement Economy?

You find a partner to lead you through the intense, vast, and complex tangle of data and point systems. Not only are market pressures great—from customers and your competition, but so is the internal pressure from leadership, like your CEO. The partner to help you drive an impactful transformation in your organization is a platform that is built from the ground up—one that is, at its core, built to orchestrate end-to-end marketing engagement.

The Marketo Engagement Platform enables marketers to listen to, learn from, and engage with their customers at scale. And scale is critical when you look at how a strong infrastructure can support and surround your customer to drive wantedness. With the scale, reliability and openness of the Marketo Engagement Platform, marketers are able to partner with integrated solutions to deliver orchestrated experiences.

Looking for a few examples of how partners and customers are thinking about the Engagement Economy? Check out this video:

The Engagement Economy is here. Your partner is here. Now is the time to transform your organization and your marketing to drive success and win the hearts and minds of your customers.

Welcome to Marketing In The Engagement Economy was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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