Interruption marketing is over. VALUE Marketing is in. Building an ecosystem of support and value around each purchase.
27th April 2011

I was struck by this wonderful quote from a pdf  my SEO expert Shashank passed on to me:

We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in & be what people are interested in.

This pretty much sums up what marketers now have to do to survive and thrive. This is especially true for online marketing. With the decline in email marketing response and growing annoyance with cold call marketing the thinking now has to be out of the box.  

People now have zero tolerance for marketers trying to interrupt them when they are in the middle of something interesting. Anyone who encounters an ad in the middle of an engrossing movie can relate to this. But consider, if the ad was just as interesting as the movie? Now that would be a game changer.

So what does this mean for the seller?

You  can no longer  sell products/services bare handed anymore. Your products / services must come with a lot of value adds.

You cannot sell a shampoo anymore, you need to sell a 'hair care solution' with a  support system complete with articles, faqs, videos and other content of interest to the customer.

Customers  are now expecting (and many times getting) more from the seller of products/ services.  Customers  will no longer accept anything less than total and complete committment from the company they are buying from.  

So what kind of 'more' are we talking about here?

More now means:

• A lot of information and literature to support their purchase decisions
• Interactive and interesting content such as videos, presentations, comics and games
• Some sort of reward system into which they are enrolled when they purchase the product (think gamification)
• Social media validation of their purchase through peer reviews
• Killer customer support and after sales service.

All this can be summed up in one word - VALUE. Customers expect Value from their purchase (note that i'm saying purchase, not product).

Value can be measured in the following terms:

• Did the purchase   make the customer more knowledgeble?
• Was the purchase fun to make? Was the homework done on the product fun?
• Was their decision validated by their peers through the social network?
• Does the gamification motivate him to remain connected to you and   buy more from you?
• Does the customer support and service make him feel specia;?

If the answer to any or all of the above is 'Yes' then you're on your way. If 'no' then you've got a lot of work to do. So get cracking immediately.

Cheers,
Ron