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The “Consumer In Charge Age” and What This Means For Content Marketing
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APRIL 2017
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You’ve probably heard the phrase “the age of the consumer” to describe one of the newest trends in marketing – the trend of consumers being more involved and informed than ever in responding to advertising and marketing .
Because customers are more empowered than ever, it is crucial for marketers and advertisers to focus their content marketing efforts. Anyone considering creating and executing a content marketing campaign should look for help with their content marketing from a forward thinking agency like Iris Content Without the right focus, your campaign could have disastrous results. With more options than ever for consumers, it only takes one misplaced exaggeration, overstatement, or corny approach to completely loose a customer – often for good.
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The Changing Role of the Consumer
Even as recently as a decade ago, vendors and service providers were more in control than the average consumer because of their inherent knowledge of the product. The bottom line, profit margin, quality, and character of the source and product were known the vendor long before the consumer, who often wouldn’t discover the true nature of the product until the transaction had been completed. This is where an expression like buying a “lemon” comes from: a consumer learning the hard way that they had been played into buying an inferior product.
Thanks to the internet and smartphone technology consumers can learn more about the services and products they are purchasing, they can also research competitors and shop around for the best deals without leaving their homes. This has not just affected the customer’s ability to negotiate, it has also affected how goods and services can be priced, forcing business to offer fair and competitive rates.
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Marketing in the Age of the Consumer
These new powers and tools given to customers by the availability of the internet and smartphone technology are changing the way marketing departments approach creating their messages and content. To do this, it is more important than ever to rely on data, and specific details about a customer’s preferences. Mass marketing language won’t cut it anymore. Customers demand that their experiences with marketing be tailored exactly to their needs – or they will lose interest and trust in the product.
Interaction between businesses and consumers has also been changed by the mainstream acceptance of social media and emailing. It is no longer an awkward undertaking to complain about or praise a product or service. Customers don’t have to talk on a phone or visit a location. They can simply email, or even better use Twitter to demand real-time action be taken to satisfy their demands about the product. This means it’s crucial to get help from an experienced and content marketer for your content marketing efforts.
Synchronizing your social media and promotional efforts with your marketing and advertising is essential to maintaining a focused message across these mediums. Without the cooperation and shared knowledge base of an experienced between the marketing team, customer service representatives, and content creators, your risk promoting a tone deaf message or miscommunicating entirely.
Another challenge is skewing the results through manipulating the system. That is, deceptive posting, feedback, reviews, and content that isn’t honest and paints a different impression of the service by people working for the business itself. So many reviews and posts are fraudulent; customers are more in tune than ever with deducing whether they are being taken for fools. Now that the playing field has been leveled with the availability of information, customers are more aware of these dishonest online tactics than ever before.
The slightest sense that a business might be presenting its product dishonestly online or on social media will cause you to lose more business and affect the ROI of your campaigning. Because of these very real consequences of misunderstanding content marketing, you cannot trust just anyone with your content marketing efforts. It can be tempting to shop for the most affordable marketing team to handle your campaign – don’t settle. Your business’s success depends on an honest and modern approach to content marketing. The results of not getting the right help with your content marketing can have harsher results than you might want to admit.
The Benefits to Vendors in the Age of Consumers
While it might seem that the balance of power shifting has created more problems than good for marketers and vendors across the board, there are actually many benefits to the Age of the Consumer.
The focus on data collection is inherently a good thing. This allows businesses to attract the kinds of customers that are looking for their services, making them easy to convert. Target marketing is also good for ROI – instead of a scatter shot technique or merely following traditions and assumptions, you can see in real time the results of your targeted content marketing and its effect on your bottom line.
The availability that customers rely on to make their choices also extends to marketers and businesses. By using data, sales teams and customer service can bring in more business, manage their pricing competitively, and lower the overall cost of taking on new business. By staying informed on how customers are responding to similar businesses and their own with real time data, businesses can offer better products and services without spending real money to develop and test a product that ultimately will fail because of this new reality. This makes it important to remember that while this is the Age of Consumers, it is really more of the Age of Information. By taking advantage of the resources available, both consumers and businesses stand to benefit greatly by doing better business.
Don’t Miss Out on the Benefits of Marketing in the Age of Consumers
In 2017 and beyond, the fine details of your marketing efforts will have more of an impact than ever before. Creating conversions and motivating potential customers is no longer based in antiquated traditions and catch phrases. Today consumer lives and dies by the information and research they can perform on a product or service and expect businesses and marketers to be more sympathetic and savvy than ever before. Don’t let a poorly created marketing campaign put the brakes on your business – hire help from the content marketing professionals at Iris Content.
Our focus is bringing businesses the benefits of marketing in the Age of the Consumer with content marketing that treats customers with respect while keeping competitive by using data to target customers. Talk to us to day to let us take your business into the Age of the Consumer without making rookie mistakes.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”50px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”17px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”on” gutter_width=”2″ padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” custom_padding=”50px|||” custom_padding_tablet=”30px|||” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”17px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#cc4315″ show_divider=”on” divider_style=”groove” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on”] [/et_pb_divider][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label=”Blog post main Section” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”FDF3E7″ allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” padding_mobile=”off” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_image admin_label=”Image” src=”https://iriscontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/annieyyt.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” animation=”left” sticky=”off” align=”right” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] [/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_team_member admin_label=”Person” name=”Annie Ianko” position=”Content Happiness Advisor” animation=”off” background_layout=”light” facebook_url=”https://www.facebook.com/IrisWebContent/” twitter_url=”https://twitter.com/Iris_Content” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_css_main_element=”box-shadow: 0 0 20px rgba(0,0,0,.1);||”]
Annie has 19 years’ experience as an editor and content creator and manager. With work in television and written media, she has dedicated her past 10 years to learning the ropes of online content creation, from writing to editing, from SEO to content management.
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