Seven Axioms for a New Marketing Paradigm

Making decisions based on “what everybody else is doing” rehashes old approaches that weren't necessarily good to begin with, relying on benchmarking to point the way forward ' all symptoms of a flight to sameness that leads to homogenization. This results in firms with lookalike and readalike websites ' Competitors churning out the same weather-beaten webinar topics.

Today, opportunities to differentiate abound. We are now able to go beyond the old standbys ' price, quality, location ' and use approaches that may not be readily apparent, but still resonate with the marketplace. Some might seem to be small, yet have a significant impact like giving customers a better experience by minimizing their wait time or having an easy, organized find on a website.

Axiom 2: Your Website Is The Number One Marketing Tool

While the firm, its people, and the way services are delivered are the essence of marketing, the website is the foremost tool for reflecting that essence and what it's like to work with the firm. Increasingly, the website is the first point of contact and practically everyone, even those who are referred, checks it out to learn more.

Technology and a little imagination opens up many ways to build powerful connections with those users the firm wants to attract. That attraction is strengthened by giving visitors a virtual experience of what to expect when interacting with the firm. By expanding on the personalizing that some product-based companies do to a certain extent, visitors can gather information that is geared just to their needs and store it for when they return. The crucial familiarity leading to trust factor is bolstered as visitors exchange information with the firm to learn more ' just as the firm learns about them ' and in the process, become more familiar with each other. In what may have far-reaching implications, much can be learned when tracing the paths visitors take as they wind their way through the site.

Axiom 3: Eliminate an Institutional Mentality

We've all had that mind-numbing customer service phone experience ' long waits, transfer hell, dead ends, the “we don't do that” person ' and after a thoroughly dreadful experience, someone robotically asks “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Rigid rules and policies that discourage adjusting to individual circumstances, a vestige of our industrial age, creates automations, causes paralysis, and dampens morale. This contrasts with the Apples of the world ' institution-sized companies that have freed their employees from that institutional mentality and allowed them to apply judgment so they can deliver excellent customer service.

Axiom 4: Communicate in a Pyramid Style

Today, demands for our attention bombard us daily from multiple sources and we have learned to quickly filter out anything that doesn't interest us and dig or click deeper into information that captures our attention. Think about what in the subject line or about the sender made you accept or delete an e-mail (filtering); or what causes you to click on a link to an article (digging). To have a better chance of breaking through today's clutter, communicate in a pyramid style that answers two important questions upfront: “Does it apply to me?” and “Do I care?”

Axiom 5: Social Media ' Be There, Be Familiar, and Be Useful

LinkedIn, Facebook, the whole world of social media, offer a plethora of options for building familiarity and trust ' key elements of AFTE. Social media is the platform to engage in a “conversation” with the marketplace. In these conversations, people read posts and comments by and about the firm, see who else interacts with the firm, and can check out groups that it is associated with ' making things quite transparent. Because of this transparency, it's easy to see threads of consistency, or a lack of them, and whether the firm is genuine or not. A firm that has garnered this credibility coupled with the shear vastness of social media has an ideal platform to become familiar and trusted as long as it has a message that its marketplace values.

Axiom 6: Responsiveness Redefined

Technology has changed many things about society, perhaps most prominently our expectations about responsiveness ' making the “old” 24-hour response rule a relic of a bygone era. In many cases, responsiveness means getting back within one to two hours, instead of later in the day or tomorrow. These days, most of us are not even willing to wait out a five- to seven-second delay in downloading a website, and are more likely to click back to one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of others sites available to us in our search. How a firm behaves in this age of accelerated responsiveness symbolizes its respect or lack of respect for others.

Axiom 7: Attract with a 'Pull Strategy'

Now, more than ever, control is in the hands of the client ' we all have the power to accept or repel information with a simple mouse click. By recognizing this fundamental change and adopting a Pull Strategy, you encourage people to be drawn to you. This strategy underlies the six other axioms and influences everything that you do in attracting and retaining your marketplace. To grasp the pull strategy, think about your reaction when a survey person stops you in a mall (push) vs. your attraction to something on display in the same mall that everybody is looking at (pull).

Throughout more than 25 years in professional services marketing, Thalia Zetlin has adapted marketing approaches or introduced new ones. She may be reached at 212-699-6708 or [email protected].

With the ongoing wave of change shattering traditional marketing models, there is a new paradigm that redefines the way firms market. Technology and culture have displaced the old-world marketing model of Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA) with Attention, Familiarity, Trust, Engagement (AFTE).

For the many firms that have yet to recognize the need to change or are grappling with how to take action, seven axioms offer practical steps to help navigate the new marketplace. When reflected on, these axioms become self-evident with examples drawn from common, everyday experiences.

Axiom 1: Avoid Chasing Mediocrity

Making decisions based on “what everybody else is doing” rehashes old approaches that weren't necessarily good to begin with, relying on benchmarking to point the way forward ' all symptoms of a flight to sameness that leads to homogenization. This results in firms with lookalike and readalike websites ' Competitors churning out the same weather-beaten webinar topics.

Today, opportunities to differentiate abound. We are now able to go beyond the old standbys ' price, quality, location ' and use approaches that may not be readily apparent, but still resonate with the marketplace. Some might seem to be small, yet have a significant impact like giving customers a better experience by minimizing their wait time or having an easy, organized find on a website.

Axiom 2: Your Website Is The Number One Marketing Tool

While the firm, its people, and the way services are delivered are the essence of marketing, the website is the foremost tool for reflecting that essence and what it's like to work with the firm. Increasingly, the website is the first point of contact and practically everyone, even those who are referred, checks it out to learn more.

Technology and a little imagination opens up many ways to build powerful connections with those users the firm wants to attract. That attraction is strengthened by giving visitors a virtual experience of what to expect when interacting with the firm. By expanding on the personalizing that some product-based companies do to a certain extent, visitors can gather information that is geared just to their needs and store it for when they return. The crucial familiarity leading to trust factor is bolstered as visitors exchange information with the firm to learn more ' just as the firm learns about them ' and in the process, become more familiar with each other. In what may have far-reaching implications, much can be learned when tracing the paths visitors take as they wind their way through the site.

Axiom 3: Eliminate an Institutional Mentality

We've all had that mind-numbing customer service phone experience ' long waits, transfer hell, dead ends, the “we don't do that” person ' and after a thoroughly dreadful experience, someone robotically asks “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Rigid rules and policies that discourage adjusting to individual circumstances, a vestige of our industrial age, creates automations, causes paralysis, and dampens morale. This contrasts with the Apples of the world ' institution-sized companies that have freed their employees from that institutional mentality and allowed them to apply judgment so they can deliver excellent customer service.

Axiom 4: Communicate in a Pyramid Style

Today, demands for our attention bombard us daily from multiple sources and we have learned to quickly filter out anything that doesn't interest us and dig or click deeper into information that captures our attention. Think about what in the subject line or about the sender made you accept or delete an e-mail (filtering); or what causes you to click on a link to an article (digging). To have a better chance of breaking through today's clutter, communicate in a pyramid style that answers two important questions upfront: “Does it apply to me?” and “Do I care?”

Axiom 5: Social Media ' Be There, Be Familiar, and Be Useful

LinkedIn, Facebook, the whole world of social media, offer a plethora of options for building familiarity and trust ' key elements of AFTE. Social media is the platform to engage in a “conversation” with the marketplace. In these conversations, people read posts and comments by and about the firm, see who else interacts with the firm, and can check out groups that it is associated with ' making things quite transparent. Because of this transparency, it's easy to see threads of consistency, or a lack of them, and whether the firm is genuine or not. A firm that has garnered this credibility coupled with the shear vastness of social media has an ideal platform to become familiar and trusted as long as it has a message that its marketplace values.

Axiom 6: Responsiveness Redefined

Technology has changed many things about society, perhaps most prominently our expectations about responsiveness ' making the “old” 24-hour response rule a relic of a bygone era. In many cases, responsiveness means getting back within one to two hours, instead of later in the day or tomorrow. These days, most of us are not even willing to wait out a five- to seven-second delay in downloading a website, and are more likely to click back to one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of others sites available to us in our search. How a firm behaves in this age of accelerated responsiveness symbolizes its respect or lack of respect for others.

Axiom 7: Attract with a 'Pull Strategy'

Now, more than ever, control is in the hands of the client ' we all have the power to accept or repel information with a simple mouse click. By recognizing this fundamental change and adopting a Pull Strategy, you encourage people to be drawn to you. This strategy underlies the six other axioms and influences everything that you do in attracting and retaining your marketplace. To grasp the pull strategy, think about your reaction when a survey person stops you in a mall (push) vs. your attraction to something on display in the same mall that everybody is looking at (pull).

Throughout more than 25 years in professional services marketing, Thalia Zetlin has adapted marketing approaches or introduced new ones. She may be reached at 212-699-6708 or [email protected].