No question the marketing and advertising industry is going through a seismic shift.  And although the main-line and industry press continues to focus the headlines on declines in budgets and the shut down of newspapers – frankly, I believe the shift is much more fundamental and reduced budgets and newspaper shutdowns are merely symptoms of this shift.

As marketers many of us have focused our efforts on two fundamental efforts:

1. Brand and
2. Demand Generation

We first got them to fall in love with the brand and then cycled them through the purchase funnel to the ultimate sale.

However, as content, access and user involvement have become more and more prevalent, it’s time for us to rethink our strategies.  We need to connect, engage and listen to customers at every single point along the “relationship” curve.

Point A:  Discover – the brand

Point B:  Find – find the brand or product

Point C:  Confirmation/Validation – checking with others to gain confidence to purchase

Point D:  Transact – buying the product

Point E:  Support – providing outstanding support post sale

Point F:  Feedback/Share – listening to customers about what they are sharing with others

When you look at the entire purchase or engagement funnel or as I like to say “the ecosystem” – you fundamentally are forced to look at how you deploy your marketing funding based on what your customer is doing, not based on media type.  In fact, you might necessarily deploy media dollars as much as create engagement platforms, communities, forums, listening tools, metrics platforms, etc.

So start looking at your customer ecosystem…. See where you’re strong, weak, etc. and begin improving and strengthening the system – based on customer requirements vs. a traditional or pre-defined media mix.

Scott