As natural it may be for us to be reactive as human beings, it’s may be the wrong approach to take in marketing without considering the risks. Similarly, a cookie-cutter approach, with a single framework and linear narrative, is a disservice to your customers and undermines your brand differentiation.
At a time when leading the conversation is the name of the game, a reactive marketing strategy puts a business at a major disadvantage. The lack of a proactive and insight driven strategy has a bleak long-term outlook, especially when responding to customers that are constantly refining their opinions and priorities, over time.
The antithesis of this approach is proactive marketing, where only the delivery of value is consistent. In other words, you make adjustments before a change happens, by anticipating future requirements and potential threats. Proactive organizations evaluate markets, products and competition, while analyzing real-time, data-driven trends, making quick adjustments to stay ahead of the curve.
Based on your organizational capacities, you can opt a suitable approach or even adopt a mixed strategy that can help you uniquely tailor offerings to each client and market segment.
In fact, a one-size-fits-all marketing approach cannot survive, let alone thrive, in the contemporary experience economy. What you need to aspire to is engagement-led marketing, where a series of positive interactions form the basis for customer loyalty.
This is also the right premise for experiential marketing, which invites audiences to interact with your business using fun and interactive interactions that stimulate their interest, and allow them to truly experience your brand.
Experiential marketing works for the same reason that we enjoy our favourite musicians in a live concert setting, despite the fact that we can listen to their music at home, often in higher fidelity sound environment.
Simply put, humans seek experiences - they form the basis of our emotions and perceptions. In marketing terms, it’s this emotional engagement that ultimately translates into priceless word-of-mouth publicity, increased customer lifetime value and enhanced brand loyalty.
In a nutshell
- Reactive marketing lacks a predetermined plan, which often results in under-delivery of value.
- A proactive strategy allows marketers to set their context, before trends materialize into changes.
- A cookie-cutter approach undermines product differentiation and personalized outreach.
- Engagement-led experiential marketing creates sustained value and drives customer loyalty.