Fusion Marketing Experience Antwerp - Intro

As the Moderator or Master of Ceremonies that the last Fusion Marketing Experience Conference, I was asked to say a few words
Here is a transcript of that few minutes.

Welcome to The Fusion Marketing Experience, Edition 3.

Let me introduce myself. I'm Gianfranco Cuzziol and my role as moderator today is three fold.

One to let you all know who's presenting next

Two, to let you know when it's time for drinks

And three, is to let the presenters know when they have 5 minutes left.

I think I should be okay with all that

At these digital conferences, I believe it's traditional to start with a quote from Econsultancy, Gartner, Forrester or some research or white paper.I'm going to ignore that and talk about football, so bear with me for a few minutes

For those of you who don't know, and indeed for those of you who do know, this week saw the appointment of Roy Hodgson as the new manager of the English national football team.

Roy was not a popular choice

He wasn't the fan's choice

He wasn't the player's choice

And he certainly wasn't the media's choice

So why did the FA make that choice and go against popular sentiment?

I think they decided that they put the task in hand at the fore and decided that Roy's skills,  experience, track record of delivery was exactly what they needed for the immediate job of getting success at the European Championship in 2 months time and for the longer term ambitions over the next 4 years.

So they ignored the popular choice and went for getting the job done

‘’And what has that got us to do with us marketers Gianfranco’’  I hear you say in Flemish, Dutch or French

Well I think we are faced with making similar decisions everyday as marketers when trying to decide on how we are selecting ways to talk with or engage with our customers...or indeed to get them to buy ( let’s not forget that ultimately what we want them to do)

Do we go with what we are experts in or comfortable with?

Do we go with what the latest guru is telling us or is flavour of the month?

Do we go with the latest silver bullet the press has latched onto?

Or do we try and do what's right for our customers in terms of what they want from us and what will help them do what they are trying to do.

I would suggest that the latter is the only route for us for success in the long term.

It's always been about the customer.

We are very clever talking about customer touch points, life cycle marketing, moments of truth etc

But surely what we actually want to do is understand what the customers wants and needs and deliver that. Keep our Brand Promise

Over the next two days we have an international selection of real experts who are also practitioners, ready to impart their practical advice to you on how to understand the customer to drive profitability for your business.

I urge you to take at least one nugget from each session and use it back at the office, not in a week or a month but from one to help you improve how you engage with your customers.

Anyway, you didn't come here to listen to me so let me introduce our first speaker.

Fusion and the Road Map to Revenue

The Fusion Marketing Experience that I was lucky enough to moderate last week was topped and tailed by Kristin Zhivago, international revenue coach.

I had previously bought her book, 'Road Map to Revenue', where she lays out a simple to follow, but highly effective process to re-engineer the sales process by, wait for it, actually selling the way customers buy.

Kristin summarised her own presentation as follows:

Current customers will teach you how to sell to new customers

If you interview them the right way at the right time, 
   YOU can change your organization – 
   YOU can make it more customer-centric

Customers are ignoring marketing and sales and creating their own Customer Communities

Buying process has changed; marketing/sales haven’t

Anyone who doesn’t catch up fast will be beaten by competitors who get it

It's well worth reading

(This is actually a link to Amazon)

Bricks and Mortar and Customer Centricity

The rumours persist -  'Amazon to open physical stores'

This story has been running since the end of last year and the debate rages as to whether the stores might be a Costco approach, pile it high and sell it cheap, or whether it might be a boutique offering that promotes primarily its Kindle range of e-readers

Whatever the outcome, or indeed even if the rumours are true, it does suggest that the role of bricks and mortar will not vanish for a quite a while yet.

Who would have thought 10 years ago that Apple would have a part to play on the high street? Have you been in an Apple store recently. Even when they are not introducing a new version of the iPad etc, the stores are always full of customers.

Why?

It's because they understand their customer.

Not all customers are truly IT savvy and feel immediately comfortable in switching from a PC to a Mac so they want to touch and feel the product and get some face to face advice.

Not all customers once they've bought the kit are happy to wade through on line tutorials on how to get the most out of the iCloud, so are ok with sitting in one of the free workshops which as Apple say

' are taught by people passionate and knowledgeable about Apple products and eager to share their knowledge with you. You’ll have a great time, learn new skills and pick up loads of tips '

Not all customers can solve their technical problems, so why not step up to the Genius Bar? 

Even the way that sales can be processed via hand held devices so there is no real till point is all about making the customer experience second to none. and you haven't opened the box yet!!

They didn't set about by setting a a target for store turnover. They started out by setting a vision of an environment that would make their customers lives better and easier. That's what being customer centric means, and in Apple's case making the store cool enough to hang out at.

We often think that customer centricity is all about data. And to a large extent data helps us understand our customers but being customer centric is thinking about customer needs and wants. 

Yes it is about an amazing in store experience but it is of course also about understanding that customer journeys are not straight forward and don't always start at 'A' and finish at 'B'.

It's about understanding that at different points in that journey their needs will vary. As I write this I came across a nice post from Hubspot on How to Design a Persona Centric Website Experience . And although web specific this section seems very relevant

Segment by Demographics: Start developing personas by researching your existing customer base to identify the most common buyers for your products and services. You may have several different types of buyers, so give each one a detailed description, including name, job title or role, industry or company info, and demographic info.

Identify Their Needs: What are the biggest problems they are trying to solve? What do they need most? What information are they typically searching for? What trends are influencing their business or personal success?

Develop Behavior-Based Profiles: What do they do online? Are they active on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks? What kind of search terms do they use? What kind of information do they tend to consume online? Which of your products do they spend the most time researching? How do they use those products?

In the words of Kristin Zhivago one of the presenters at the Fusion Marketing Experience, 

“Marketers spend the bulk of their time on internal politics and learning new tools – out of necessity. But all this knowledge is worthless without a personal, in-depth understanding of what customers are really looking for and how they want to go about buying it,”

This is certainly something Best Buy considered when they set up their interactive screens in stores for customers who wanted to touch and feel the equipment but also wanted information and reviews on the product.


If a product needs 'test driving, whether that's a new computer, a car..or a new fragrance, stores still have the upper hand. The trick is to make the experience so amazing,  that the customers buys there and then..and not from an online retailer later on in the day.


But if they do, it's from the brands own e-commerce offering.

Reasons to be at the Next Fusion Marketing Experience

Sign up at www.fusionmarketingexperience.com

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