The relationship between vendors and their customers has always been tenuous but in the last several decades we have seen what was once a workable arrangement become impracticable. The causes abound for this slow disengagement. Conventional forms of customer outreach including advertising, direct mail, email solicitation, popup ads and other traditional methods of push marketing all show significant fall off in effectiveness. Many blame spam filters, popup blockers, TV devices that zap commercials and more.
But numerous market analyses also show that customers have become highly skeptical and distrustful of corporations due to scandal and corruption reported in all media. More telling, the low success rates reported for new product introductions suggest that companies have a poor idea at best of what customers want and need and are, thus willing to spend their money on. In this environment traditional marketing has fallen flat.
There is ample evidence — from both the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) worlds — that enterprises need greater customer input into product direction, marketing and its research, advertising, and messagin--in a word, engagement. The key to engagement is finding a way or ways to achieve greater customer intimacy that are accurate and affordable. This Beagle Research Group Executive White Paper examines the forces driving the market and it identifies a solution that is both ancient and very modern — when in doubt, ask the customer.