Who Wins Marketing Battles in The Era of Oversupply
The model of the contemporary economics can be defined with the famous term “consumerism” which implies a consequence of the so-called overproduction when supply exceeds demand. Such diverse economists as Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes concurred with the view that overproduction came to a deficit in demand and therefore could lead to crisis.
Indeed, from time to time such a state of affairs generated an economic crisis in one or another part of the world. However, the global society found a way out from the overproduction issue, as social historian Stuart Ewen explained in his book “Captains of Consciousness”. In the days of the Great Depression of the 1920-30s, a team of advertisers, marketers, and psychologists proposed the American Government an aggressive ad campaign aimed at equating consumerism with The American Way to foster the national economy by encouraging people to consume as much as possible. And it worked.
This is exactly what every modern marketer faces in a day-to-day routine. The ample supply of the goods in the markets, on the one hand, goes in line with the “healthy consumerism” of the growing population on the other hand. Both phenomena lead to the continuous sophistication of marketing. What are those methods and techniques that can help marketers win the battles for the consumer attention in the era of oversupply? Let’s figure it out together.
History reveals the roots
The access to cheap abundant energy was one of the main reasons for the overproduction, how odd it may sound. From a historical perspective, the intensive extraction of fossil fuels in the early 20th century enabled a machinery boom in almost all industries. As a result, people started catching more fish, cutting more trees, growing more crops, and producing more consumables. After WW2, when the majority of the famous bourgeois families such as Krupp, Schneider, or Siemens had to transform their enterprises into public joint-stock companies, the resurfaced transnational corporations expanded their production chains and trading networks throughout the Globe. Beginning from the 1960s, when China declared a more opened policy, entire South-East Asia became the “world factory” where cheap local labor was combined with the advanced Western technologies. Both the production and distribution of goods keep growing in the present days of globalization enforced by the internet. And even the newest post-industrial model of economics does not remove the general trend of oversupply whatever product or service it concerns.
Oversupply generates marketing challenges
In order to conquer a certain share of the huge global market, every brand has to deal with the growing consumer audience nowadays. That’s why the first challenge facing marketers is the number of their customers. Since everything any company offers in the present days is reflected on its corporate website, the marketers have to communicate remotely with the majority of the clients via either email or the other communication channels. Hence, the customers are equated with the subscribers today. On the one hand, the possibility to reach thousands, oftentimes tens of thousands of subscribers simultaneously seems an advantage every digital marketer should appreciate. On the other hand, spammers use the same bulk sending technologies making the marketers’ efforts meaningless in many cases. What can help marketers prevail against both the spammers and competitors?
Solution: an advanced marketing-oriented software capable of covering huge subscriber audiences should use such technologies as DKIM and SMTP to enable marketing campaigns passing through spam filters successfully.
Just-In-Time marketing
The manufacturers who successfully compete in the present market often use such an advanced approach as JIT (Just-In-Time) production. It implies a very dynamic sequence of actions based on the constant alertness with regard to a possible demand which may appear at any moment. Hence, the manufacturers tend not to produce to stock avoiding overproduction. They react to some triggering market trends making them understand what and how much should be produced. What if such an approach can be applied to marketing? The marketers should stop reading the economic tea leaves to invent one or another marketing campaign. Just a certain event based on the customer behavior should trigger a proper response from the marketers. Thus, Just-In-Time marketing implies meeting the customer expectations in terms of both the proper time and subject of interest. In fact, one of the basic features of such an approach is well-known for marketers in the form of the so-called trigger messages.
Solution: an advanced marketing software should be able to launch a massive campaign in response to a certain customer behavior predetermined by the marketers as a triggering event.
Respond to communication oversupply
The oversupply term relates to various services in addition to overproduction of goods. It is hardly possible to discover an absolutely unique commercial phenomenon in the era of information. Available analogs always compete. The notorious digital revolution enabled a vast variety of communication channels along with the devices through which the channels work. Some of the channels such as social media are on the hype now. However, it does not mean that people stop using SMS, for example, since everyone owns smartphones. The ample choice of means of communication should encourage marketers rather than making them focus on a single channel such as email, for instance. In these days of the all-embracing communication, the only problem facing marketers is purely technical. Everything comes to a special toolbox capable of combining the most popular communication channels all-in-one.
Solution: an efficient marketing platform should offer various communication channels such as email, SMS, and web push notifications in a combination in order to let marketers cover the broadest possible audience
Oversupply may induce overstress
The hyperdynamic competition among marketers can cause a psychological overstress especially when their campaigns bring poor results. The top management often requires increasing the marketing efficiency while the marketers reach the limit of their productivity. What do marketers do when both the supply of products and number of customers keep growing? The common logic suggests some automation algorithms be applied to the marketer workflows. In order to avoid overstress as well as to boost their performance, the marketers should implement some advanced means of automation in the form of a specially-designed software capable of elevating the marketers’ routine at a higher level. Preferably, the software system should be created by marketers for marketers. Who knows better than marketers what problems they face? Besides, the routine job is worth shifting on the shoulders of smart machines allowing the “human” marketers focus on just creative assignments.
Solution: a special marketing software system should provide fully automated workflows when marketers just need to define some variables to make their routine run around the clock.
Customization counteracts oversupply
When people face no problem in purchasing everything they want, their consumer patterns start changing. The ample choice makes them discover an “ideal” product or service. Consumers are satisfied with neither standardized products nor average solutions anymore. They are looking for something special, something exclusive, something customized just for their individuality. And the brands capable of meeting such consumer expectations hit the jackpot. Moreover, the marketers who practice an individual approach to their customers win the competition even if a product they offer belongs to a typical mass production. Why? Because just the personal relations become the most valuable in the days of overproduction. But how to proceed an individual approach to each customer when an average contact list consists of thousands of names?
Solution: a modern marketing software system should be able to track statistics of the results of marketing campaigns with regard to each customer in order to create a personalized approach whatever customer behavior it may concern.
The decisive advantage
All the above-mentioned solutions indirectly describe a universal marketing system allowing marketers to re-establish their routines for winning the commercial battles in the era of oversupply. This is far from a hypothetical theorization in fact – the system’s name is Automation 360 which is the culmination of several years of efforts and research made by the professional digital marketers from the bulk sending platform SendPulse. Their broad practical experience is combined with the advanced software technologies in Automation 360. The highly customizable, automated, multi-channel marketing system running 24/7 is what Automation 360 in its essence. Neither oversupply of services nor overproduction of goods are frightening circumstances anymore for those marketers who implement the true performance booster Automation 360 in their workflows.