The 2021 Marketing Disconnect (Hint: It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again)
Bonus points if you recognized the famous line “It’s deja vu all over again.” from the immortal Yogi Berra. If you don’t know who he is, he is one of the great thinkers of our time and he also played a little baseball. Google him. But not now.
The reason I invoked Yogi’s brilliance is because, quite frankly, Déjà vu all over again for yet again there is a disconnect when it comes to marketers. And rest assured this is not my first disconnect rodeo. Far from it.
In 2014 I penned 65% Of Marketers Are Not Giving Consumers What They Want. And just last year I opined as to Why Don’t Marketers Give Consumers What They Want? These two Forbes pieces, however, dealt with the disconnect between marketers and consumers.
The disconnect I am referring to here in these hallowed halls is all about a disconnect amongst marketers themselves.
The Disconnections Party? Right This Way
The other day I was perusing The 2020 State of Digital Marketing from Altimeter. It is “Based on a survey of 476 senior digital marketers across North America, Europe, and China, the report provides key insights into what strategies, channels, and practices perform best, including how these vary across industries and regions.”
It is chock full of juicy findings, among them this one, which spurred yours truly to put pen to paper here today.
Before I get to what jumped off the page at me re: the disconnect, I want you to take a moment and see if you come across ANY disconnect, let alone mine. I’ll wait.
[[getting a cup of coffee]]
Ok, what did you find? Any disconnects? Anything that did simply did not make any sense?
Leading the list of priorities is “acquire new customers” (40%). Ok, that makes sense.
Next up, “increasing share of spend” (39%). Sure, that works.
Moving right along we see in 3rd at 34% of marketers saying they want to “successfully launch new products or services.”
So far, these are all pretty spot on, right? I mean in terms of priorities I can get on board with all of this.
But hold on there, Sparky, what do I see way, way down on the priority list at a mere 14%? “Creating a memorable digital customer experience.”
Cue the sound of brakes screeching.
While I am not sure why the word “memorable” is included and how you would even define if an experience is memorable or not, the fact that less 2 in 10 marketers identified this a priority is stunning.
You could make the point that without the right customer experience, NONE of the others can EVER be achieved. In fact that is PRECISELY the point I am going to make now. You are kidding yourself marketers if you think you can acquire new customers, increase share of spend or brand awareness or ANYTHING else on this list if you do not put a major priority of customer experience.
And I’ll take it a step further. Remember when I said this was an example of a disconnect among marketers? I was wrong. Dead wrong.
This is unequivocally another example of another disconnect between marketers and consumers. How else would you explain this? We know customers want the best possible experience — even memorable — across every channel every single time they interact AKA have experience with YOUR brand.
Why is this so hard to comprehend?
Someone help me understand this, please.
