The Law of Perspective - Law #11 under the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
“Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time”. Long term effects are often the exact opposite of the short term effect. Think of ‘always a sale’ retail mentality training a customer to never buy at full price.
Perspective in other words is a ‘point of view’ which in this case is referred to that of the customer. For every action there are multiple perspectives from multiple individuals, but what matters is the most common and collective perspective of individuals regarding any event, action, product or service. Marketing efforts are to be very cautiously designed considering both the long and short term effects than the short term effect alone. Every decision taken in terms of positioning or selling a product or service will give rise to a short term perspective from all customers. A brand action will incite a perception in people’s mind though for a very brief period, but is enough to drive the thoughts in a particular direction. It becomes difficult to get them think in the opposite sense if they are developing a negative perspective about a brand. It is therefore important to think first and then action any marketing efforts with maximum caution.
Digitization has opened up communication channels like never before. Now, you don’t need to go to the press or spend a lot on advertising to actually communicate a message to your customers. Today, with the right strategy you can build your own community and audience with whom you can develop a communication channel through which the brand can send timely and personalized communication to each and every person concerned. The beauty of digital media is that of being reciprocal. Unlike the other forms of media which is by far one sided, digital media enables a channel that will help both parties to connect and express what they intend to. This will therefore enable brands to not just send customized and personalized brand messages to all those connected but will also enable organizations to collect feedback, collate the perspectives of individuals and use analytics to get intelligent information out of the data. The intelligence in the form of data analytics will help marketers understand, forecast and predict the performance of a brand well in advance. They can also perform actions like what-if analysis to make decision taking easy and effective.
During the pre-digital era ‘The law of perspective’ was more of a calculation based on samples collected from a few individuals which were then collated and analysed by experts. These days, there are advanced analytical tools that can collect data from not only the connected lot but also from the crowd that is completely not connected to you through your network. There are tools available in the market that can collect social sentiments en masse through social networks and provide valuable insights into the way customers might be thinking. This piece of information when obtained in a timely fashion will help a brand to control and divert the perspectives of individuals in the direction that the marketers want. Although it is easier said than done, it is not impossible either when used with the right strategy at the right time. Digital Media has made a lot of data available, all one needs is the knowledge to identify the data, get right and meaningful information out of it to then execute near flawless marketing strategies.
