How Online Media Will Change Marketing Strategies

Is the world of marketing changing? The advent of online marketing has adjusted the basic assumptions of marketing and the way in which companies reach potential customers. A longitudinal study by Valos, et. al. (2010) looks at the perceptions of 40 senior marketing executives and attempts to understand how things have evolved. The study provides implications for future marketing strategies.

No doubt the Internet has changed the very way in which people obtain information from their environment and how they make choices between different types of products. Each purchase is based upon a range factors that includes social impression, product understanding, ease of purchase, information attainment, benefits vs. costs, and consumer personality.  

The Internet has become a new catalyst in putting these factors together in a way that leads to positive purchase decisions. Today’s advertisers are moving away from mass marketing approaches and seeking to be more exact with their marketing dollars to increase conversion rates. 

Why spend a fortune canvassing a large market when you can focus on those customers most likely to purchase? The Internet is offering the ability to customize marketing directly to motivate buyers based upon specific customer profiles. Messages are becoming more focused to appeal to core consumers.

Related research indicates that marketing will become more akin to engineering through database-driven decisions (Peltier, et. al. 2006). As marketing becomes increasingly interactive and able to reach specific subgroups it will require higher levels of analysis and development. 

The way in which companies put together their marketing mix will evolve to maximize emerging technologies. Imagine how a highly motivated market segment may be attracted to specific videos, language, graphics, key words, and displays. The way in which companies develop their marketing mix will naturally have an influence on attracting the selective attention of their most lucrative customers. 

The authors conclude that the increase in niches will make marketing increasingly complex. It will be beneficial to coordinate diverse media, marketing objectives, and marketing metrics. Personalization of marketing will likely grow and emerging technology needs to be incorporated into a company’s marketing mix. As customer touch points increases a greater emphasis is placed on using behavioral data and attitudinal data to fine tune marketing components. Mass marketing that serviced the mass manufacturing systems of the past are likely to become more expensive and be viable for certain types of businesses.

Peltier, J., et. al. (2006). Interactive IMC: The relational-transactional continuum and the synergistic use of customer data. Journal of Advertising Research, 46(2), 21-28.

Valos, et. al. (2010). Practitioner prognostications on the future of online marketing. Journal of Marketing Management, 26 (3/4).

Improve Customer Satisfaction through Process Development

Organizations seek to raise their customer service preferences but may ignore more fundamental adjustments in the manufacturing processes which raises and creates higher levels of product development. It is often these systematic changes which can transform quality products into superb products that improve upon quality, design, functionality, utility and eventually long-term customer satisfaction.  

Customers have needs and demands that make their way into their perceptions of the business and the product. A positive perception of quality is important for meeting these customer expectations Stojkovic & Djordjevic (2010). Where Americans may have difficulty competing on price due to international competition, they can still enhance quality and service to retain value.It is difficult to compete on price as a sole factor when labor costs and currency make product manufacturing much cheaper in China and Asia. Even with such difficult to match price points Americans can still provide a higher-level product with updating features and strong service performance. Yet before this can occur operations should be aligned along key competitive strategies.

To use service enhancements for additive value it is important to understand what types of service customers are seeking. These include time, timelines, completeness, courtesy, consistency, accessibility, and convenience, accuracy and responsiveness (Nazzal, 2006). Such surface enhancements do not necessarily address the satisfaction that is inherent within the product itself.

Once an organization has defined their customer’s needs they should begin to align their operations to meet those standards at a more fundamental level. This alignment creates systematic adjustments to ensure higher caliber of products. According to Radovic, et. al. (2009) there is nine steps to improving processes to create greater customer service:

1.)    Develop mission and vision statements.
2.)    Indentifying service inputs for process identification.
3.)    Define the company’s goals and objectives.
4.)    Determine service quality determinants.
5.)    Identify processes currently being used.
6.)    Understand the critical processes and select those that fulfill goals.
7.)    Define the process performance indicators.
8.)    Review and re-engineer processes.
9.)    Manage processes for continuous improvement.

Alignment of operations to customer preferences is often a detailed and painstaking process of continuous improvement. Through the development of strong operational adjustments the end products specifications are more closely aligned to customer needs. Often we view service as only customer service but this does not take into consider the service adjustments that can be applied systematically and create compounded benefits in product design, quality, and output. Understand what your customers want and align your operations accordingly.   

Nazzal M. (2006). The Palestinian Health Care System ata critical and crucial point (The Two-Edged Sword. How does it foster life and death simultaneously. Retrieved May 22^nd, 2013 from http://www.ahewar.org/eng/show.art.asp?aid=104 

Radovic, M., Tomasevic, I., Stojanovic, D., Simeunovic,B.. (2009). An excellence role model:Designing a new business system one process at a time. Industrial engineer. 41, (8) 

StojkovicD., Djordjevic D. (2010) Important aspects of customer relationship management conceptin banking quality. Journal TTEM-technics, technologies, education, management. 5 (4)..