This article was originally published by Forbes.com.
What’s the cost of marketing distraction when shiny objects like new technologies or buzzy trends whip up fear of missing out in even the most disciplined marketers? We saw it plenty in 2023 (hello, generative AI), and we’ll doubtless see more of it in 2024.
When brands start believing “more is more,” the potential cost is much bigger than the price of this or that new tool. The real impact is the opportunity cost—wasting time and effort investing in what are essentially distractions, instead of focusing on what really matters, which is delivering better experiences for people to drive growth for brands.
Let’s explore the real cost of this kind of distraction. The antidote to FOMO isn’t just a “less is more” approach—it’s really “better is more.” You have to know precisely what gives your brand its edge, and then be disciplined enough to pursue it with laser focus, ignoring other temptations that are not accretive to your customers or their experience.
There are plenty of tempting traps along the way, but maintaining a disciplined focus on what really matters for your customers is worth it because of what it will unlock: customer advocacy.
Storage Is Cheap, But Hoarding Is Expensive
Some people are natural hoarders, so it’s no surprise brands display these tendencies, too. Combine this with the constant threat of marketing FOMO, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for dangerous levels of distraction.
For brands, that presents like bloated product lines and a spray-and-pray approach to selling through inexact marketing and advertising.
A decade ago, brands started to hoard data, thinking that the more they could learn about their customers, the better. Storage is cheap, after all, and it made the real cost of all this distraction harder to notice at the time. Now they are drowning in data and struggling to find the data that actually matters. This is a great example of good intentions gone wrong.
Martech tools are becoming more plentiful and affordable for brands. Look at the explosion of Scott Brinker’s marketing technology landscape supergraphic over the years. You have the budget dollars to fund these tools, but can you afford the time, effort and potential distraction?
AI Is the Latest Mega-Temptation
The elephant in this particular room is AI. To be clear, product teams and marketing teams need to understand AI and should have already started to develop AI-specific strategies—including knowing AI’s place. New, hyped-up technologies can be valuable and even transformative. AI will certainly be for some. But brands need to be very clear about the business problem they’re using it to solve.
AI tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity are amazing efficiency enhancers. They can help you get 80% of the way there with some tasks—but today they don’t take you the last mile. We’ve seen this play out in some of our research around AI and customer experience: Brands talk a good game about using AI, but only 12% of the organizations we surveyed actively predict customer needs using AI.
If you aren’t disciplined, and you give in to distractions like AI for non-core use cases and other buzzy marketing tactics, you risk finding yourself in a dangerous position: You’ll get really good at being really average in many things instead of being really great at what matters.
Avoid the Loyalty Trap
Speaking of average, what was once the measure of a great brand—customer loyalty—has almost become table stakes in modern marketing. Think about it: With so many brands running loyalty programs, building apps and online communities, and generally trying to make their customer experience more like a rewarding subscription service, loyalty just isn’t all it was once cracked up to be.
I mean, sure, if you chart the stages of a customer relationship, from the point where they don’t know you or care about you, through a transactional relationship and into the loyalty zone, then loyalty is a great achievement.
But here’s the thing: In my own experience as a consumer, I’m loyal to many brands—but would I count myself as an advocate for them? Certainly not for most of them. A loyalty program will keep me loyal, but it won’t turn me into an advocate on its own. Only a great experience will. If advocacy is the new differentiator—the key to outperforming your competitors across customer acquisition, retention and growth—then it’s advocacy that you need to focus on single-mindedly.
Get This One Thing Right
So what does the path to advocacy look like—the one all of this other shiny stuff is distracting us from?
The way I see it, you earn customer advocacy by:
- Building and harnessing a strong data foundation.
- Understanding your customers and prospects better than any other brand.
- Creating meaningful, personalized value exchanges.
What most brands don’t realize (until it’s too late) is that loyalty isn’t the final destination. In fact, it’s a particularly dangerous and deceptive trap awaiting you on your journey to the ultimate goal of customer advocacy.
The bonus additional step here is, of course, avoiding those non-core distractions and focusing instead on the kind of customer understanding that only your brand—and no one else—can build.
This article was originally published by Forbes.com.