Interactive Marketing and it's Future

You're not just competing with fellow businesses to create the best single product of the market anymore; in this highly technological age, companies are also competing to gain meaningful, interactive relationships with customers--a relationship that provides engaging dialogue and mutual benefits. Companies customize marketing experiences with each individual in mind, optimizes decisions and processes for these individuals, responds to their changing marketing conditions, and empowers staff and customers to advocate for the brand; i.e., Forrester's CORE, the four marketing principles of interactive marketing. These principles focus intensely upon the company's interaction with individual customers of their market rather than in comparison or juxtaposition with competing companies and businesses or products. This new perspective is made possible with the rise of social media and the relationships that can be made through them between companies and customers.

What interested me most about the CORE initiative was the last principle, empowering, which focuses both on customers and employees. Employees act not only as the backbone of the company and within the company but as the catapult in advocating beyond the company's IT as well.  Those who "proactively connect with others" and are "online loudmouths" are easily spotted within companies and should be utilized as advocates. These advocates, being empowered, will in turn empower others to interact with customers and spawn innovative ideas to further interactive marketing.

CORE's empowering others focuses on the essential difference between empowering and forcing. Empowering customers means allowing them the right to comment positively and share information about your company across social medias because they've had a positive experience with the company; empowering does not mean forcing customers to "share" the link on Facebook with every purchase, for example. Remaining conservative and highly strategic with what you require of customers in interactive marketing builds trust within the relationship and positive, empowered advocating.