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In a recent Omniture presentation entitled Integrated Marketing: Making Data Work For Your Customers, Forrester Research VP and Research Director Elena Anderson provides some eye opening numbers that help to clarify the state of marketing on- and off-line.

First, a recap of way consumers today view the role of advertising

• Consumers who agree with the statement “I buy products because of their ads”: 13% [down from 29% in 2002]
• Number of online consumers think email is a good way to find out about products and services: Just 10%
• Believe “Companies generally tell the truth in ads”: Only 6%

The influence of standard advertising models is not only limited, but also diminishing further over time. Meanwhile, the emerging social internet is solidly in growth mode: Web 2.0 users {of blogs, social networking, RSS, podcasts] jumped from 3% to 10.5% of all internet users in the past two years.

How to transition from the legacy marketing strategies toward something more relevant [and effective] in this emerging marketplace? Elena puts forward Peter Kim’s definition of the customer-centric marketing organization, whose primary role is customer alignment — understanding the customers’ goals and strategies, and developing the marketing tools to maximize their abilities to fulfill those goals. Short term strategies here start with basic behavioral marketing [the "initiation of a marketing activity in response to a meaningful change in customer behavior"] focused around cart abandonment contact strategies, and extend to inbound traffic and the use of real-time analytics to drive interactions.

In today’s market, consumers can easily develop and share their own perceptions about a brand. The end goal for marketers is to build mutually satisfying relationships, delivering the appropriate information and support to each customer, regardless of their individual perspective or needs. The data required to effectively manage these scenarios is wide and deep, but certainly becoming more and more accessible to marketing organizations of all sizes. However, as Elena aptly puts it in her blog,

There is no technology silver bullet. Eager to capitalize on market hotspots, technology vendors are messaging heavily about their integrated marketing “solutions” and “suites”. But, as we learned with the CRM craze, technology is not the answer. At best, it is an enabler. At worst, it can be a very costly diversion.