According to the literature : Non-intrusive marketing, also known as permission marketing, is a marketing strategy that focuses on gaining the customer's attention and consent before promoting products or services.
That's not my definition.I believe that effective marketing can be achieved through a subtle and authentic approach, by targeting specific individuals or groups without that this is being perceived as a marketing action. Non-intrusive marketing puts the needs of the customer/user in the center by giving back time in stead of grabbing attention and thus time. I sometimes rephrase it as "the best marketing is no (perceived ) marketing".
From product centric marketing to non-intrusive marketing
Marketing has evolved rapidly the last years. In the past most, companies and brands promoted their products. Features and specifications where the name of the game. More recently it evolved towards a more customer centric marketing. In this era the benefits and the solutions have been the cornerstone of how marketeers operate.
Complexity however increased for marketeers. Channels increased, new ones appeared, technology evolved rapidly also etc.
This resulted often in more and more shouting. The law of diminishing returns has remained for many marketeers unknown and they saw their ROMI (return on marketing) reduce steadily and for some rapidly. Today recipients of all these impulses by marketeers’ trust less and less what is being shouted and the impact of peer recommendation has grown considerably. Today 9/10 buying decisions in B2B are driven by peer recommendation. Social platforms have accelerated this.
Marketing therefore should become non-intrusive. It should feel unnoticed, responding to ones needs at the right time through the right channel. Easy to say , difficult to execute.
A road to non-intrusive marketing:
I believe the road to more non-intrusive marketing is build on 4 pillars.
At the center of the marketing strategy should be a Purpose. As Simon Senek mentions too often members in companies have a clear view on the what and how but lack a clear why. The why is a guiding principle. A good purpose is driving consistency. More on strategy can be found in the e-paper 'strategy in action'.
Authenticity and Personalization in everything that is being done is key. Return on marketing forces requires more than ever marketeers to look at personalization by means of standardization. Technology fortunately allows us to collect vast amounts of data and our knowledge increases every day. A marketeer will never be substituted because creativity remains more than ever important in this digital world. Creativity produces that smile, surprise, … and makes the difference
This results in 4 quadrants of activities. When executed well, I believe this makes marketing less intrusive and increases the efficiency of the marketing investments. Important however for all quadrants is the mindset. It is about how you execute it consistently, day after day ....
The lower 2 quadrants are all about the use of data and how to translate them into actions. Doing personalization efficiently requires high levels of standardization and data driven decisions.
Trigger marketing (knowledge/personalization): Extremely simplified this is a game of action/trigger – reaction. A careful selection of triggers should be identified. Propensity models for example are very important in this quadrant. A proposal for a data allowance upgrade will be welcomed when someone hits its mobile data limit. An SMS (considered as very intrusive) with proposal for rebooking to a later flight for a late arriver at the airport will be welcomed...
Journey marketing (personalization/creativity) requires in depth knowledge of the customer and the necessary creativity. Journey marketing is about bringing a prospect/customer from status A to status B. Moving a prospect from status A to B through several considered actions is hard work and many iterations will be needed.
Channel and timing will play an important role in these quadrants. When reaching out with messages/communications at the wrong moment or not through the intended channel/device than this will be regarded as very intrusive.
Social Presence (knowledge/authenticity) is all about working the network. Working the network can and should be done by any team member. The role of marketing is to stimulate it with amongst other relevant content. Being active (there are many levels of activity) on social is not only relevant for sales (social selling) , marketing or senior management (social telling) but anybody in the company. The more members are active the bigger the network effect. Opinions of employees are regarded double that of classical marketing messages. Both Authenticity and knowledge is key to do it successfully.
Actions on the crossroad of creativity and authenticity do when executed well drive word of mouth (authenticity/creativity) which is most impacting the buying behavior of potential customers and customers. Word Of Mouth will be generated by story doing and not storytelling. A personal example was the digital acceleration of Telenet business or the partnerships and events that were concluded at AE. Influencer marketing can stimulate this but when not perceived authentic than the impact vanishes rapidly.
And what about content? Content is in my believe a key enabler in all quadrants. Today more content is produced than consumed however. Authentic and relevant context based content brought in a non-intrusive way will drive consumption. A topic by itself.
And there is where technology comes around. Today a lot of marketing technology exists to drive the execution of the quadrants. The arrival of Artificial Intelligence solutions (try #chatGTP for content and journey marketing , intelligent learning bots,...) will provide the means to truly implement non-intrusive marketing. The focus will again be on creativity and innovation in marketing. That will make the difference between a good and excellent marketeer.
Above was a personal small write down of a road to more non-intrusive marketing.
Your views are more than welcome.
Stijn.