The biggest trend I see is integration across the customer buying process. Okay, maybe integration doesn't sound new, but it's finally getting the attention and respect it deserves in business markets. The problem has been siloed management of the customer relationship across the lifecycle.
Here's how it has been working. The corporate communicators conduct their awareness campaigns. The direct marketers generate leads. The call center nurtures the leads till they're ready to see a salesperson. Then the sales force takes over and the marketers lose complete touch with what's going on. And from the customer perspective, the experience, which is disjointed and confusing, erodes brand value.
Those days are, thankfully, coming to an end. Due to more powerful — and more accurate — databases and lead management software, and even more to heightened awareness of the importance of a seamless customer experience, business marketers are moving toward more effective management of the customer relationship.
The new holy grail is multi-touch campaigns, where each communications medium is put to its best use, using the optimal number of touches and the most compelling offers at each stage, and where a consistent brand message is sustained throughout. Business marketers are moving away from undifferentiated campaign “blasts” to a more carefully tuned series of communications targeted to suspects, prospects and current customers. They are even figuring out how to measure multi-touch campaigns by isolating specific touches in test and control experiments, then connecting the final revenue outcome to the campaign series, to calculate campaign ROI. It's not perfect, but it's getting there.
