Confianzys Consulting is a Product Management Company

Engagement Marketing: Marketing WITH Customers December 7, 2010

Recently, Mashable, the well-known social media tracking website, announced plans to put up a giant Facebook wall at their New York City headquarters, made up entirely of photos of Mashable fans on Facebook.

Mashable’s business is Content, and while “honoring” fans, it is cleverly getting them engaged in the process of creating more innovative content, whether online, or as in this case, as a giant billboard. Clearly, Engagement Marketing is something that we will be seeing more of.

Mohanbir Sawhney, McKormick Tribune Professor of Technology at the Kellogg School of Management explains succinctly in this video below, how companies need to change their fundamental attitude towards marketing – from “exposure” to “engagement”.

Engagement Marketing, i.e. getting consumers involved in the evolution of a product or brand becomes critical in the face of two somewhat contradictory trends we are seeing today.

One is the globalization of knowledge and information. With technology becoming a leveling factor, more and more people around the world can access the same things, whether it is music, information, products or opinions. At the same time, we are seeing a great deal of market fragmentation, with smaller and smaller niche markets. By their very ability to serve a long tail of consumers, marketers are discovering niches that didn’t exist before (or at least couldn’t be served profitably).

Globalization with fragmentation means that theoretically, one can reach a wider market than ever before, but practically the market is likely to be choosier than ever. This means that technology product marketers face high chances of failure; engagement marketing helps to mitigate these risks – from getting customers involved in defining the value proposition to co-creating content, events and promotions.

One other way of looking at it is that with the rise of social media, consumers will engage with your product in many different ways, whether you want them to or not. Engagement Marketing will help ensure that you are part of that conversation, rather than standing on its sidelines!