p>Craig Dempster, John Lee
The Rise of the Platform Marketer
Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2015 by Merkle, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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FOREWORD
In 25 years leading a growing, evolving customer relationship marketing company, I have witnessed a number of major industry shifts, propelled by advancements in technology, increased access to data, and improvements in analytic techniques. The digitization of just about everything in the lives of consumers has brought about the greatest shift of all – the ability for marketers to customize the brand experience to the individual customer. Through personalized interactions that take place via online and offline media and channels, across multiple screens and platforms, throughout the customer lifecycle, today's marketer can truly optimize the value of the customer portfolio. The opportunity of addressability at scale far surpasses those of eras past.
My colleagues, Craig Dempster and John Lee, were among the forward-thinking leaders who recognized this opportunity early on. Together, we spent the first few years of this decade developing a customer relationship marketing (CRM) approach we call Connected CRM (cCRM)®, which has proven itself in activating customer-centric strategies for Merkle's Fortune 1000 clients.
My 2014 book, Connected CRM: Implementing a Data-Driven, Customer-Centric Business Strategy, outlined a highly structured organizational framework for building customer strategy as a business strategy. The concept of the Platform Marketer was first introduced in that book as the persona that harnesses a new set of skills necessary to operate within the cCRM framework. And in the year since it was written, Craig and John have been closely involved with clients who are establishing and executing cCRM strategies.
With that experience, we have expanded our thinking. We have cultivated a deeper understanding of the addressable audience platforms and further honed the Platform Marketer skills, whose influence and complexity we didn't fully realize when I wrote cCRM.
As the market's movement toward digital accelerates, so does the movement of marketing spend, with brands investing in new technologies that enable addressability in all their customer interactions. These growing and constantly fragmenting digital audience platforms, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, are the new frontier of marketing. They open countless avenues for creating relevant engagements with consumers. The opportunity is so vast and multifaceted, we've come to realize that marketers must begin to retool themselves, at the most foundational level, in order to master the rapidly proliferating digital platform opportunity.
In writing The Rise of the Platform Marketer, the authors enlisted the support of a team of expert contributors, authorities in their own fields of study, to ensure that the content is comprehensive, accurate, and adaptable not only across industries but over time and through constant change. They have expertly outlined the competencies required to remain relevant in marketing today, producing results that include not only competitive advantage for your organization, but for the individual reader —the Platform Marketer. I hope marketers will read this book and absorb the valuable skills needed to stay up to speed on the digital audience platforms and capitalize on the opportunity of addressability at scale.
PREFACE
For decades, the concept of customer relationship marketing (CRM) has attracted executives who believe in customer centricity and the idea that customer strategy should be the basis of the business strategy. In his book, Connected CRM: Implementing a Data-Driven, Customer-Centric Business Strategy, David Williams defines Connected CRM (cCRM)® as the systematic practice in which marketers identify, acquire, and retain customers based upon their value. Through a framework that supports these orchestrated customer interactions, brands are able to improve financial results, create competitive advantage, and drive shareholder value.1
As marketers, we've always known that the key to competitive advantage is to be the brand that better understands the needs and behaviors of individual consumers. That intelligence allows the brand to create greater value through more personalized, relevant experiences. Over the years, advancements in data management, technology, and analytics have continuously enhanced our capacity to build vital customer intelligence.
More recently, the mass digitization of media and channels has allowed marketers to take that knowledge to another level, driving ever more personalized engagements with individual consumers, delivered across the complete range of media, channels, and devices. Today, the market refers to just about everything as media. As a marketer, you have countless avenues for addressing consumers, whether by reaching the audience through third-party sources, such as display or search (paid); building buzz through social communities, industry chatter, or even public relations (earned); or by making first-party connections via your own properties, such as website or mobile apps (owned).
Addressability at scale is the opportunity to create competitive advantage through the delivery of targeted, personalized experiences to consumers. Media and channels that are enabled by addressability at scale can be described as “addressable audience platforms.” An audience platform is a digital technology that enables those automated experiences to individuals (known and anonymous), at scale, utilizing first- and/or third-party data. Every interaction is an opportunity to collect and leverage data. But only now it has become possible to manage these disparate interactions at scale, as the digital audience platforms, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, continue to develop and grow. And our ability