One of the key IMC tenets is data-driven formulation of strong consumer insights to produce effective marketing strategy. McKinsey’s John Copeland drove the point home at Medill last week, with his statement: “Understanding the why is important, because it’s the only way that you can get out in front of the consumer. Otherwise you would be chasing behavior, or chasing demography.”
Copeland, a senior expert in marketing at McKinsey & Company’s Marketing & Sales practice, spoke at an event for the Professional Speaker Series at Medill. He showcased McKinsey’s Consumer Decision Journey (CDJ), a reorientation of the traditional marketing funnel that breaks down the consumer buying decision process. While the traditional funnel assumes a methodic reduction in the number of brands in the consumer’s consideration set at each stage, the CDJ proposes a more dynamic version of the process.
With the deluge of information available, consumers are too overwhelmed to start off with an assessment of all available options. Often, their initial consideration set of brands consists of as few as 3-4 brands, which are three times more likely to be purchased eventually. This number may increase or decrease as consumers seek more information during the purchasing process, as well as during the post-purchase evaluation phase. Consequently, although it is important to gain entry into the initial consideration set, marketers still have opportunities to impact consumers across the journey. Decoding the CDJ and understanding the “why” reveals these opportunities.
Once this is done, it is critical to achieve integration across touch points. Only a third of the touch points for consumers involve company-driven marketing; the rest is comprised of consumer-driven activities such as Internet reviews, recommendations, past experiences, and in-store interactions. The relative importance of touch points varies through the journey – and aligning marketing with the decision process through a strong integrated strategy is now more important than ever.
The original McKinsey article can be found here.
--Pooja Ranganathan
***
Pooja Ranganathan is a blogger at Vitamin IMC and a student in the Masters in Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University’s Medill School. She does not get football, and is amazed she managed to discover a sport more boring than cricket. She can be reached at PoojaRanganathan2010@u.northwestern.edu
