Smarter Commerce – Redefining commerce in the age of the customer

I’m reading Rebecca Lieb’s latest report from Altimeter Group. It’s called, “The New Marketing Equation: Why Organizations Must Rebalance.”

The main thrust of Rebecca’s report is that if you’re a marketer, you’re now in the business of publishing original content. Or at least, you should be. Her analogy is simple, elegant and very revealing: where you used to be an advertiser, engaged in a one-way conversation about your products or your services, now you must be a storyteller. Storytellers engage their audience with respect, gauging the pacing of the narrative, or changing it to meet the needs of different listeners.

The explosion of social media, the growth of a new category of vocal consumers with tremendous expertise about your brand and your market, and the wondrous ability to measure the responses of your audience in real time are driving a new urgency around the concept of content marketing (the storytelling element in Rebecca’s analogy). Rebecca backs her points up with both anecdotes and hard data; I was especially surprised by the case study about Indium Corporation and suspect you’ll find the company’s inventive interpretation of data to be as intriguing as I.

Don’t forget to take the Content Marketing Maturity Self Audit. How did your business score?

Also make sure to read Rebecca’s own post on this report.

Technorati Tags: Altimeter Group, marketing, Rebecca Lieb, Smarter Commerce, social media