Trumblog

Unlike what you were probably taught in school atoms don’t actually look like a miniature solar system with the nucleus surrounded by electrons in perfect little elliptical orbits. The electrons actually form a cloud around the nucleus where the electrons “could” be at any time. In other words those electrons are not in a standard orbit, they do what they like.

In marketing, the core brand message has supporting media and touch points orbiting around it. It’s nice to think of these opportunities for engagement to be orbiting in tidy paths for customers to interact with in exactly the way that we planned, but of course it doesn’t really work that way. Consumers do what they want, how they want, when they want. They want online and offline media. They want it at this very moment and in the future when they’ll have time, they want to lean back with it and make it their own or share it with friends. Clearly then, prescribed interactions on demarcated paths are going to lose large sets of your intended audience.

Lately I’ve used the image of an electron cloud to describe the marketing tactics needed to allow customers and brands to interact most fully. It requires content and opportunities for engagement across multiple channels often duplicated so that customers’ interaction is customized to their unique use case. Allowing customers then to engage on their own terms increases opportunities and relevancy.

Only a subset of your customers will run into a roadshow event or have the time to stop and check it out. But a social media presence can help more customers become aware of it so it becomes a destination. A microsite makes the event findable by the curious, but time strapped. Social media again can be harnessed to spread the event beyond the location and moment so that while it is experienced by fee it is then shared with many. This also provides new opportunities for brand interaction by monitoring these channels and directly engaging the brand advocates via these channels, thanking them, answering questions and generally welcoming them into the experience brand. It’s the Event Social Agent facilitation that I’ve written about before.

So how are you marketing? Are your touch points on specific paths where you hope people will run into them? Or are they a cloud where your customers and brand advocates can find them wherever they are and can use them in the way that best suits their needs?

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