My $24.95 lesson in marketing in an age of empowered customer.

I recently purchased Ad-Aware Plus because my computer has been acting really strange and opening random websites involuntarily. Well, I received a very nice notice from Google stating that my computer might be infected and I needed to get software to clean it up. Google listed three products; since I trust anything that comes with Google brand seal of approval I just clicked on the first one. OK, so $24.95 is not a bad deal to get this annoying problem solved.

Right? Well, wrong!

I buy it and when I go to download, it does not. So I contact their shiny online customer service agent. He comes online within seconds…I am happy as a clam. I need to get this resolved and get back to work asap. Rep tells me that I need to pay another $25.95 service fee to help with the download. Seriously? You are asking me to pay more to help me access something I already paid for? Click! I am out and on twitter ranting and raving about Ad-Aware.

Then it occurred to me, I am the empowered customer now. I have a voice.

Lessons #1:

We are living in an age of empowered customer. Same customer you just ticked off might just have 6000 twitter followers. She might be advising a $100MM company and be in charge of a multimillion dollar IT budget. More important than any of this…she now has a voice that can potentially reach thousands of YOUR customers.

Lesson #2:

One of my favorite bloggers Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent had a recent post that highlighted the need of customer-centeredness in budgeting for marketing as well as communication strategy and customer service. She stated “Marketing budgets need to be set on customers’ ability to pay, not marketing spend.”

The point of setting marketing budgets based on customers’ ability to pay is especially poignant for B2B service providers. When I speak to clients about marketing budgets, we often shift our thinking from setting benchmarks based on what we spend last year or what the competition spends. Instead we focus on determining measurable and predictable results based on the customers’ engagement with the service offering. For example engaging customers on social media is not necessarily a budget intensive activity but rather it is time intensive and has to be strategically administered.

In this age of customer empowerment, lines are not only blurred but completely emerged between customer service and profitability. Marketers can no longer hide in their cubicles and burry themselves in excel charts within the safety of quarterly budget meetings. Social media is the acid test for all things marketing and it is immediate. Throwing money at bad business practices is no longer effective. We have to get back to the basics and scrutinize our business models. As marketers we have to be courageous and question managements' view on marketing ROI.

After all ROI really comes from customer not from marketing activities.