Are Big Data, Predictive Analytics, and Social Media Getting in the Way Of Basic Marketing?
I recently purchased an accessory for a phone that required assembly instructions. Unfortunately, the English instructions were unintelligible—incorrect grammar, missing words, sentence fragments, etc.
Last month, I received an offer for a credit card—which I already have and regularly use—that was far better than the offer I had originally used to sign up for the credit card.
After subscribing to a newsletter, I am mailed a request to “renew the subscription” monthly. The first request started one month after I paid to subscribe.
For some time, I’ve been struck by the disconnect between the desire to use sophisticated techniques to market to consumers when the basics often seem to be wrong. How can companies of a novel product get the basic instructions wrong? Or communicate to a loyal consumer that they aren’t as valuable as a new customer? Or repetitively bother a new subscriber with requests to renew 11 months before it is time?
Is it possible that all of the emphasis on “newer” marketing—coping with big data, social media, digital, and sophisticated analytics—is preventing marketers from getting the basics right?
To explore this topic further, I talked with Shreesha Ramdas, the CEO of Strikedeck, a Customer Success Automation startup based out of the Silicon Valley.
Whitler: You indicated that you believe that marketers are stepping over loyal customers to prioritize the acquisition of new customers. What makes you believe this is happening?Ramdas: To better understand this, you have to understand my background. I founded a company that created marketing automation systems. In this capacity, I talked with a lot of B2B firms and saw how demand generation went mainstream and became an important priority for CMOs. However, what I found is that marketers tended to become obsessed with customer acquisition—at the expense of driving loyalty. If you look at CMO profiles on LinkedIn, more than 90% highlight their accomplishments in demand gen and customer acquisition, while few speak about customer loyalty and retention.
[Source:-Forbes]
