The marketing value chain

In a presentation I have recently, I cited the phrase from a McKinsey article a couple of years back

"if marketing has one goal, it is to reach consumers at the moments that most influence their decisions"

This is a fairly broad statement to make and on reflection it sounds like it comes from a psychologist and not a technology driven marketing perspective. However, if marketing is to be efficient in it's delivery, it needs to understand where it sits in the decision making process and ultimately what its goal is... to drive further revenue (and therefore business value).

Below is a diagram I have used fairly often to simply show the marketing value chain:

Although it is a pretty obvious process (and typically used in the context of digital marketing) it does tend to focus the role that marketing of any sort should have:

1. To create the relevant traffic (store visitors, website clicks, etc.) that creates the greatest number of prospects
   Note: Relevancy can mean anything from a greater propensity to buy through to more profitable ones.
2. So that these people then go on to convert (online, this is typically called a 'goal' and can be anything from an online purchase to a downloaded brochure)
3. So that this then creates business value for the organisation.

Channel Relevancy

Multi-channel marketing and retailing is not a new thing, in fact Argos claims its been in this business for 35 years now. However, times have changed and the Global economy is slowing down. The way that some companies will respond to this is to switch to lower 'cost to serve' (The average cost required to deliver a service to a customer) models in an effort to reduce staff & overheads.

But how do you know which channels to streamline without impacting your customers and therefore potentially affect revenues in the long term? This is especially important for companies that potentially have the same customer wanting one view of the them, regardless of the channels offered.

Here's my advice for Channel Marketing & Retailing...
Be relevant!

1. Understand your different customer types (create personas, measure, test & develop)
2. Understand their existing channel mix for information & purchase (which may be different)
3. Encourage a lower 'cost to serve' mix
4. But do not force customers to use a mix they do not want to - or risk losing them