About Me
I am a marketing professional, primarily focused on digital marketing, consulting and digital education. I help companies move into the digital space, as well as define the tools and strategies they need to communicate with their customers.
My career has spanned a variety of interest areas. I've always had drive and ambition, and as a result, I moved toward marketing through a series of choices. But I've always known that there was something out there for me, and I'm so glad I found it!
You can find my linkedin profile here: www.linkedin.com/in/jeannettekocsis/
What you won't see on my profile are some of those career choices that led me to marketing. Some of the high points were working for the South Carolina department of health, leading maternal and child health programs for a 3 county area before i was even 25. And then working for a CPA firm for over 10 years, where I discovered my love for technology. I was self-employed for many years, teaching accounting software, providing Novell network administration, and started building web sites in the mid-late 90's. That's when i discovered search.
I created an e-commerce site with a community built-in in 1998. besides learning search, I quickly learned affiliate marketing, paid search (early days!), and digital media. When i added my community software to the site, "social" wasn't a word anyone used. I learned fast, something I've always been able to do. I soon had a large group of moderators and very busy community, with site visits well over 100,000/month - and back then, that was not an easy thing to do!
My Point of View
Many marketers today are jumping into the concept of "connected consumers." Everyone talks about getting relevant, but there is a big change required to get to this "relevant" state. We can start with small things; asking customers what they want to hear about and through which channel. And you could enable that with a good email service provider, mobile provider and preference center. But we have to think bigger and leverage technology to find and manage customer interactions with the brand.
One problem is that consumers don't tell brands what they want every day. And their needs change over time. If a brand can't capture behavior and act on it, they can't possibly be relevant. I am an Amazon Prime shopper - spend a ton of money with them. Why? Because they have everything I want, and it's very easy to buy from them. If I buy something for a family member today, I may not care about that tomorrow. Amazon used to be much more reactive to browsing behavior, but I've noticed that they are waiting now to find out more, and not making big assumptions based on one-time browsing.
Another issue is that we still need to market using segmentation, and use data to gain insights into what customers might care about. If we put our efforts into digital behavior-based tools, we won't be able to be relevant when the customer is not engaging directly with us. We won't see their behaviors, and will need to use modeling and other data sources to get into their heads.
Mobile adds its own set of complexities, and we need to put effort into it. Each of the small moments that a consumer engages with a brand has its own opportunity. And there are millions on those opportunities occuring each day, with each video or photo upload, review, tweet or post. The most important aspect of mobile is that it may not be the channel that the consumer converts in - and likely it's not. Understanding where it fits in the customer journey and experience, and maximizing the small moments that consumers interact with the brand are critical steps in our planning for the future. Identifying mobile customers, through onboarded data, enables those mobile moments that will matter the most.
It's not an easy thing, for a brand to become customer-centric across all connected channels. But I believe it is worth it to make the effort, even if it is a longer journey than you'd like.