Releasing large data value with science and technology marketing

VP of IBM, general manager of Greater China market, brand PR and public relations

Three months ago, I made a very small circle of marketing attempts in Shanghai, and invited 6 industry 15 customers. Some of these customers and IBM have millions of of dollars of business transactions each year. Through communication, we agree that companies must put aside their own schedules and ask what their customers want first. In this process, marketing is an art, to achieve no trace of snow, so that customers in business dealings with the time is particularly comfortable. If the enterprise really calm down to understand its customers, and then tailor-made for it, it will be easier to achieve long-term cooperation with customers, to do a single.

The change of the Times brings the change of customer's behavior and thinking, the customer will influence the enterprise's strategy more and more, affect the enterprise's existing business and future development. There is no doubt that there has been a revolutionary reversal in the relationship between customers and businesses. Based on this in-depth reflection on customer demand change and socialization behavior, IBM last year proposed CEC (figuratively Executive customer), the concept of "CEO".

Marketing to attract and retain customers

With the development of social media, the influence of customers is not limited to individuals. But many enterprises may not be aware of the previous mentioned a variety of marketing, not the same industry, different marketing methods, if placed in the era of large data, will need to carry out a new round of thinking. What does marketing really do to attract and retain your customers? As a practitioner of industry transformation, IBM put forward some suggestions for your reference. In simple terms, there are three "missions" and a "combination".

Mission one is to understand each customer's personalized needs, create personalized marketing. The Economist's journal points out that the amount of information (digits) in the 2015 Digital universe is 3 times times larger than that of cosmic objects. 1 million of tweets are posted every day by Twitter. In such a world, it brings us challenges and benefits-pick up the needs of customers at the same time, using large data analysis of each customer's behavior, and thus achieve the so-called "science and technology marketing."

These complex data include demographic data, behavioral data, and sales data that can help us gain insight into customers, track their behavior, and get insights into customer needs at each node-whether for 10,000 or 1 million customers, Can be a scientific approach to each of these customer needs, and then personalized marketing. The new method will become the key tool for enterprises to win in the fierce competition.

The second is to create a full contact system to reshape the customer experience and create maximum value from each interaction with the customer. This era of consumer groups, they are only loyal to their own positioning, the impact is that customer loyalty is very low. If the company can not let consumers in the entire chain to achieve the maximum personality needs to meet, they will be from any link to jump off: inquiries, purchase, payment, service.

In the face of consumers from different points of contact, enterprise marketing should think about how to react in real time, in the appropriate customer contact point, for the appropriate customers, in the appropriate time, say the most appropriate, make the most correct marketing, so that marketing into services, put marketing in the intangible.

Science and technology marketing brings not only the change of science and technology, the change of marketing, but also the change of thinking mode. Customer-centric enterprise transformation, from the marketing department will begin to gradually optimize the enterprise's processes, personnel and operations, the most critical is to build an information technology platform, integration of all customer contact points, including online, offline, virtual, entity, to form a customer-centric full contact system. This is the only way to provide maximum customer value at each point of contact and retain customers.

Mission three is to promote the company's culture and the company's brand real integration, unfading. Some people say that the highest level of marketing is brand marketing. In today's world, which is completely transparent by large data, the hardest thing in marketing is to establish a good corporate brand. Because consumers access to information channels are countless, enterprises have been unable to transfer information one-way, but also unable to control consumer awareness of the brand. This makes the enterprise must return to the fundamental of brand construction--pay attention to the real fusion and unfading of company culture and company brand.

The most successful enterprises understand themselves, define the meaning of enterprise existence, so that each employee understand the character of the Enterprise, the enterprise character into the company's behavior. Every day, in the corporate culture driven by a lot of things, affecting people's view of the brand. The CMO (Chief Marketing officer) in charge of marketing needs to take the initiative to listen, actively participate in social media, and develop sharp insights. CMO also leads companies across the gap between brand commitment and brand reality, from nurturing "brand ambassadors" to creating brand authenticity and brand support.

In fact, a lot of partners in the communication with us, the most want to know one of several things, including IBM's Century brand is how to shape? How to carry the brand? Who is the daily commitment to IBM's brand commitments and claims to the real world and customers? In fact, for IBM, we don't need a star endorsement, because the company's value to the customer is the IBM every employee. The employee is the brand carrier of IBM.

As a century enterprise, IBM still has a strong vitality of the key is the construction of corporate culture DNA. IBM's core values are employees through online discussions, and each employee is involved in the construction and evolution of brand culture. Only the staff from the heart to identify the company's core values, in their contact with the media, customers, it will be such a confidence-containing behavior signals and emotional signals to pass out, the Unfading brand culture spirit will naturally reveal.

IBM's brand value ranked second in the world (the first is Coca-Cola). The ability to maintain this brand value must be consistent with IBM's commitment and the experience that is finally delivered to the customer, and that customer can always be faithful to you.

CMO with CIO

In IBM's view, everything revolves around the customer-changing customer needs. There is no paradox among all entrepreneurs around the concept of a customer being the center of the universe. It is a big proposition whether you are ready to do CEC deployment. There is also a key element, the so-called "a combination"-the combination of technology and marketing, or CMO and the CIO (Chief information Officer).

For an enterprise like IBM, the biggest change in big data is that the entire enterprise's operations, management patterns need to be adjusted, and the most important change is that CMO and CIOs will start conversations. This means that the two different people who are fashionable, radical and conservative, mean to sing the same song.

In the past, the two areas under the jurisdiction of the two "tribes", the marketing department that they know the best customers, can bring new opportunities and ideas; But when these two people come together, they will be pleasantly surprised to learn the results of technology marketing. For example, the IBM Marketing Automation Unica system is matched with our entire system to help the marketing department track all customer behavior, both to reduce customer harassment and to help the sales department gain revenue.

Starting in 2012, IBM pioneered an analytical insight into the corporate culture and pioneered a company-wide ability to develop analytical and insightful talent, both it and marketing personnel. Analytical insight to become the company's DNA. Analytical insight is very important, especially in the big data age. We also hope to be able to work with the world's key universities in the future to establish this (analytical) discipline.

What CMO should do

As the CMO of IBM Greater China, I first want to consolidate the existing customer market. IBM measures customers with different dimensions such as industry, region, channel, product, etc. IBM's strong customer IT capabilities have prompted IBM to continuously deliver new technologies, new capabilities, new customer experiences, new insights, and keep pace with them.

In this process I often face the challenge: one phase of the promotion to do, where the two phase? We have to keep pushing to win the order at last. The whole company's business in Greater China is very important every one weeks, when someone needs to find out the problem from the data. Data analysis can tell me exactly what the problems of the financial Services Department are. Is it a product issue? Or a business problem? I want accurate insight.

Second, create the market. This is one of my biggest challenges as IBM Greater China CMO to help the company discover new customer base. In the process of discovering new customer base, new technology has given us the ability to provide tailor-made personalized solutions to our customers. From the discovery of potential customers, let the customer feel their needs, potential capabilities, and future growth space is understood by us, this is a potential customer into a real customer prerequisite.

Activities done, we are concerned about where the opportunity, new customers, new markets where, in this regard, the IBM Marketing department has done a lot of effort. I think the present age is a marketing era, the future game is the game of marketing, innovation or technology, or marketing has become very important.

Third, brand proposition. The expansion of brand value and brand proposition means that the commitment and the final cash to the customer experience is consistent, which is necessary to obtain customer loyalty.

The new age requires CMO to be a man of full capacity, he has a strong planning capacity for overall strategy, deployment, and business prospects, like the CEO, who has a sensitive insight into numbers like the CFO, as well as the CIO's technical savvy, understanding of technology, and the same focus on employees as Cho (Chief Human Resources officer). Set up the company culture, and finally he will know more than customers.

Today, many enterprises have begun to think: in the big Data age, how to find a best business model, growth model to serve existing customers, future customers? How to meet the personalized needs of customers in a large data age? How do I provide an end-to-end customer experience? In the era of full transparency of social media to highlight their own brand ideas?

There are too many choices in front of each client, and choice is the power that the new era gives them. In this battle, if you can use the technology to analyze what the customer needs, understand his needs, and then use the virtual, physical, and back-end integration of the system to provide them with a consistent experience and services, the final customer must go with you.

IBM is a technology-led company, but the most important point is that over the past 100 years, IBM has been constantly transforming, constantly Phoenix Nirvana, shaping a new business model, these experiences even for different industries for reference is also great. Today, in the face of the challenges of CEC, we are willing to work with China's customers to make the turn of the data age.