Future of Marketing - how to create magic for customers! Interview after marketing trends keynote

Interview with Patrick Dixon, Futurist following keynote on the future of marketing at the Swiss Marketing Forum.

It is shocking how many marketing directors tell me in my marketing trends keynotes that they really hate marketing.

Almost all hands go up around the audience at large marketing events when I ask a simple question:

"Put up your hands if you hate marketing - you hate being marketed at.  You hate SMS campaigns directed at your phone.  You get irritated by YouTube adverts that last more than 5 seconds, and so on."

Mystery shopping is a great reality check, a wake up call for many marketing directors and customerexperience teams. Pretend to be one of your own customers. Watch, listen, experience.

And we need to completely rethink how we send basic information.  Again, if I ask audiences how their close family or friends contact them about something urgent and important, they are most likely to say SMS or WhatsApp.  Voice call is a last century way to get in touch fast, and emails are easily lost in the digital noise.

So how many corporate executives communicate with their closest customers by WhatsApp?  These things really matter.

If strangers and distant friends or business colleagues are pushed away onto email, and close friends and immediate family use WhatsApp, then your number one strategy should be to develop a WHatsApp client relatiohship.  To become family.  Inside the trusted inner circle of their personal lives.

My message is that very small things can make a huge difference to the kind of relationships we have in business.  

Shift from shouting the same messages to the entire population - to personal advice, as a trusted advisor on the journey of life.

Make magic for your customers.