The New Marketing Reality Consumers are in the driver’s seat.  The Web has put them there. Today’s savvy consumers engage with brands on their terms – when they want and how they want.  They connect with brands through multiple channels – researching, comparing, and buying as they choose – on the Web, through the mail, over the phone, and in brick and mortar stores. The most successful marketers are the ones who recognize and adapt to this new reality… relationships with today’s consumers occur at the consumer’s discretion.  The brand no longer calls the shots. As marketers, we must be relevant, credible and accessible in all channels – wherever the consumer wants to engage.  As more and more consumers are engaging with brands across channels, our marketing efforts must be integrated. A New Kind of Agency The new realities of marketing require a new kind of agency.  Not a traditional media agency, not a direct marketing agency, and not an interactive agency, but an agency that can seamlessly link marketing in the offline world to marketing in the online world.  And it can deliver consistent, branded experiences and messages across all channels. Catalyst is that new kind of agency.  We’ve been preparing for the new realities in marketing for more than a decade, combining the scientific targeting of traditional direct marketing with the engagement and interactivity of the Web.  A robust database environment supports a portfolio of Web, email, search, mobile and display capabilities. And because analytics is part of our traditional direct marketing DNA, we’re leveraging intelligence derived from data to drive our online marketing work.  We’ve developed a powerful Web analytics capability that allows us to optimize our online marketing efforts in real time.  We understand when media and channels complement each other and when they compete. Today, our work is truly integrated across channels.  And therein lays the challenge.  Not only must the customer experience at all levels be consistent, but marketers need a 360° degree view of consumers and their behavior across all channels. Meeting the Challenge Catalyst is positioned to meet this challenge better than any other agency.  Originally founded as a data-driven direct marketing agency, analytics is in our DNA.  We’ve been securing and analyzing customer information and segmenting and profiling customers for twenty years in order to deliver marketing messages that are relevant at the segment level. In the coming years, as more consumers engage with brands online, the number of customer data points that can be tracked and measured will increase dramatically.  Each search, each visit, each click, and each registration will provide us with even more marketing-actionable customer information.  And as we link customer data in the offline world to marketing in the online world, such data will need to be gathered, analyzed, and leveraged across channels. The marketing and analytics teams at Catalyst have already begun working with clients to develop databases, systems and tools that can provide a holistic view of customer behavior and relationships across all media and in all channels.  The days of delivering segmented messages in a single channel are fading as the Catalyst team develops capabilities that can predict behavior and deliver thousands of customized marketing messages to individual consumers consistently across multiple channels.

One of the real benefits of working in an agency environment is the constant exposure to new and different marketing challenges across a range of industries.  And while each industry is fundamentally different, the commonalities are what I am most drawn to. Recently, I have spent time actively seeking those parallels…and given more thought to how I might use these insights to benefit our clients. So think about this.  What do pet owners have in common with those who opt to have their oil changed on a regular basis?  How has the economy influenced these two apparently distinct consumer groups in common ways?  Sure enough, we see that spending during these tough times…on vehicle maintenance and on pet care…has been under pressure, though consumers are spending relatively less in so many other areas. But the pressure is still there…and marketers have to drive repeat purchase activity and aggressively reinforce benefits, especially when it comes to premium products.  Based on our proprietary research in the pet arena, that means tapping into consumers’ emotions about giving pets the very best, given all of the emotional support that pets provide during these tough economic times.  In the oil change arena, the message is about the increased importance of maintaining your vehicle when cash flow is low…in an effort to avoid more costly repairs. And I continue to believe that, when the economy tanks, the need to maintain relationships with customers is more critical than ever.  Rather than slowing down on messaging, marketers must acknowledge the situations that their customers face and showcase how continued engagement with their brand will help them weather the storm. So once again, while the industries seem to be completely different, those who market to pet owners and oil change customers have more in common than at first blush.

It's interesting to watch how social media continues to evolve and takes new paths. I'm pretty sure that when Facebook was created they never thought that people would be creating pages for their pets. This morning on Facebook, I created a DogBook page for my cocker spaniel, Belle. So yes, my dog now has a wall, can post status updates and has friends on Facebook...now if I could only get her to clean up the backyard! Just for fun, I thought I'd search for dog friends for Belle. I didn't put any limits on distance and found that their are 1.7 million dogs Belle can friend within DogBook. This process got me thinking more about pets and social media, so I decided to do a quick search of the blogospshere and was shocked at how many dog blogs there were and, of particular interest, how many of them were written in the first person. We are truly a nation that loves its pets, thinks of them as family and now are able to share their lives with others on a much larger scale. Of course, this process got my marketing mind going as well; with so many pets (and their owners) engaging online, what a great opportunity for related companies to engage with active, passionate audiences. Some have started already and I'm sure others will follow. But the real success will come from those who take the time to understand the audience and the social media space and learn how to engage in conversations without being invasive.

Ever since the first banner ad appeared and asked the question “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here?” (AT&T ad on HotWired in 1994), agencies and marketers have tracked and talked about the click…but is that really a valuable measurement?

Read more on Just what are you measuring anyway?…

While reading the recent stories about Captain Morgan’s guerrilla marketing effort with the NFL, I realized that we’re often tasked with similar objectives for developing social media campaigns. There are huge audiences out there actively communicating and brands want to be part of the conversation, but is inserting our message really the right approach?

Read more on Don’t Strike the Captain Morgan Pose in Social Media…

According to a recent study, 66% of Americans do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests. Reading this statement made me wonder: Is that a true feeling, or perhaps was the question worded in the wrong manner? For years, studies have shown that when asked, consumers adamantly believe that advertising doesn’t affect their purchase decisions, but clearly we know that this isn’t true.  So rather than focusing on the negative perception of targeted ads, I wanted to point out some key benefits targeting provides to consumers.

Read more on Consumer benefits of behavioral targeting…