What is dialogue?
“The accelerated acquisition and development of customers by utilising the most effective communication messages, contact channels and combinations.”
Why you need to walk the talk
It's tempting for a business to keep doing what it's
always done. "If it worked before it can work again, right?" Plus
it's easier to keep everyone cosy in their cotton wool comfort
zone. Unfortunately, as history insists, it's a sure-fire way for a
brand to lose touch with customers.
Successful brands adapt with change, staying relevant and
finding a positioning with sustainable competitive advantage. The
changes to embrace are both rationale and emotional. There's the
new buying process and evolving decision-making units. Then there's
shorter attention spans, and an individual's web-given right to
bypass sales reps with a mouse.
Bearing in mind that 75% of Brand Strategies fail at
implementation, the ability to develop a compelling Brand Strategy
(the 'talk') alone is unlikely to help businesses meet the
increasing year-on-year demands of shareholders (Yeah that's great,
but where's our money?). Success lies in the ability to 'walk the
talk'!
If a brand is the sum of its contact then the contact needs
managing, including personal relationships. 'Monologue marketing'
is becoming less effective than stepped, engaging Dialogue. In
other words "accelerated acquisition and development of customers
by utilising the most effective communication messages, contact
channels and combinations".
Dialogue combinations need to be built around segmented,
value-based propositions with Web increasingly as the hub. Just
talking product features won't cut it anymore. Dialogue also has to
be a 'relevant creative experience', not just isolated tactics with
'the big idea' slapped on (an approach unlikely to capture a short
attention span or cut through the 'information clutter'). It means
being the brand that understands 'me' as an individual better than
anyone else. If businesses are serious about it, they need to
prepare for the inevitable 'Permission Based Dialogue Era'
today.
One key requirement of 'walking the talk' is integrating sales,
marketing and web databases. But be advised, databases need
disciplined, accurate and regular maintenance by all customer
interfaces. You may or may not be pleased to learn that this can't
be achieved by high investment. As with all aspects of implementing
your Brand Strategy, it takes a good, old-fashioned pride in your
step as you walk together as one
Comment: At IAS you'll never walk alone. We
pride ourselves on compelling brand strategy joined with
continuous, hands-on support during implementation.