What’s your job as a marketer?  You’re a lot of things: a creative genius, a salesman, a spammer and a visionary. But no matter how you operate, you are concerned with one thing at the core: the management of customer expectations and satisfaction. This basic tenant of marketing has gone largely unchanged. But as technology allows for a sublimation of the macro into micro — global campaigns that reach into the palm of your customers’ hands — your customers’ expectations shift.  They expect brands to create real-time, one-to-one connections. Therefore it’s no surprise that social and mobile are most brand’s chosen strategic marketing channels.

Your customers expect seamless interaction with your brand. You must travel with them across interfaces. 66% of marketers say social media is central to their business. No longer is social media a job you toss to some intern. As social media grows in importance, it follows that strategy will be built around it. In this era of big data and analytics, marketers can identify the most popular social channel among consumers and confidently direct their campaigns, instead of misfiring and wasting resources.

Mobile devices are now the number-one place that people access digital media. 58% of marketers already have a team devoted to mobile marketing. These brands have seen their marketing effectiveness significantly increase by integrating mobile across channels. Analytics show location-based marketing tactics are particularly effective. For example, in October of last year, American Eagle tried out Shopkick’s iBeacon in-store marketing program and found that more than twice the amount of Shopkick users used the dressing rooms when they received shopBeacon messages. There are countless other stories just like that one from the last year.

It boils down to this: your job is navigating the intersection of your brand and your customers. While this has always been true, today you have more access to your customers than you have ever had, by a significant margin. You can know more about your customers’ tastes and preferences, friends and networks. As a marketer you are armed to the teeth. But the nature of these new channels — social and mobile — is a constant evolution.  Your challenge (as many already know) is keeping abreast of the ever-expanding innovations in order to most effectively utilize them. 

About the Author

Russ is Co-Founder and CEO of Dynamic Signal, a Silicon Valley software company that provides VoiceStorm, a marketing platform that helps top brands partner with and leverage the social reach and influence of their employees, fans and customers to achieve their branding, marketing and commerce goals. A digital media industry veteran, Russ has more than 15 years' experience in the online marketing world. He co-founded and was CEO of Adify (acquired by Cox for $300M in May 2008), was EVP of Corporate Development at comScore (NASDAQ:SCOR) and was among the first employees at Flycast (acquired by CMGi for $2.3B in January 2000).

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