Should Small Business Pay Attention to Quantum Marketing?

Quantum Marketing

There’s a lot that small businesses can learn from big-name companies. In fact, adapting a few marketing strategies from successful brands that already sell to your customers is a common low-cost marketing hack.

• Domino’s Pizza and FedEx taught us the power of using guaranteed delivery as a positioning strategy.
• Bombas showed us how to use charitable giving as a way to attract customers who want to do good and make money doing it.
• Nike showed us how purchasing based on their tagline “Just Do It”  literally increased physical performance. 

In his new book Quantum Marketing: Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow’s Consumers, Raja Rajamannar, CMO of Mastercard lays out a case for a new era of marketing that he claims will change everything.

I received a review copy of Quantum Marketing and couldn’t wait to see what this massive disruption was going to be and how it will impact small businesses.  My goal in reading the book was to come away with insights similar to the ones I described above.  What can we learn from these big brands that will take us into the next phase of getting and keeping customers?

If You’re Overwhelmed by Technology — Just Wait

In Quantum Marketing, Rajamannar claims that marketing is facing an existential crisis.  He says that marketers will need to take on a new mindset. He urges marketers to master new technologies like artificial intelligence, wearables and augmented reality in order to compete for today’s fickle consumers.

As a traditional marketer, especially one who works with small businesses, I found these conclusions somewhat disturbing. 

After all, more than half of business owners surveyed find it challenging to deal with any form for marketing. Not only that, but with the average marketing budget for small businesses hovering around $500 per month with little to no marketing automation or technology investment, I expect most small business owners will simply ignore the trend Rajamannar is writing about. 

What Can Small Business Take Away from Quantum Marketing

While Quantum Marketing is written for CEOs and CMOs in enterprise organizations, I think there are a few important nuggets to take away from the book.

• Look for ways to engage with your customers — at scale.  That means putting systems in place, like installing a chat on your website where you can grab customers while they are looking for a reason to choose you.
• Hyper personalize your marketing with artificial intelligence. AI isn’t just for big companies anymore, you can find AI features in all kinds of tools like email marketing services that can send emails at exactly the time your customer is most likely to open it. CRMs can pull information from social media accounts that will give you insights into your customer’s preferences, etc.
• Market to your customers’ senses: Use multi-sensory marketing –whether it’s using scents in your store or combining video with written content or creating both online and offline experiences for your customers. 
• Make decisions based on data and not just your gut.  Always be engaging with your customers, ask about their preferences, speak to them in their own words.

Rajamannar is forecasting what your favorite brands are going to be implementing as they market to you.  Read through this book with an eye out for the megatrends and then look for practical ways that you can incorporate some of this quantum thinking into your own marketing efforts. 

The Author Brings Technical Savvy to Branding and Marketing

Raja Rajamannar is currently the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Mastercard.  He’s been named among the top 5 World’s Most Influential CMOs by Forbes and in the top 10 WOrld’s Most innovative SMOs by Business Insider.  His undergraduate degree is in Chemical Engineering and his work has been featured in Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management. 

Rajamannar’s technical background makes him uniquely qualified to spot the impact that technology has had on all aspects of business, and especially marketing. 

A few years ago, “growth hacking” was all the rage.  If you’re not familiar, growth hacking in marketing involves combining insights based on data and technology and applying them to simple, low-cost marketing tactics and strategies.  

What are the Benefits of Reading Quantum Marketing

If you’re looking for practical marketing strategies or tips — you won’t find them in Quantum Marketing.

The benefit of this book is the 30,000-foot view of incoming technologies and trends that you should be aware of and incorporating in your marketing. 

Look at this book as your guide to cool new ways to connect with your customers and get them to choose you for each transaction. 

The technologies discussed in this book have been talked about for years — but now they are hitting the mainstream and it’s time for you to pay attention.

Is it Worth the Time and Effort to Read Quantum Marketing

If you’re looking for more down-to-earth, simple, low-cost, marketing advice for a main street business, you won’t find it here.  This is not what I’d call “pop” marketing like what you’ll find with Seth Godin.  This is serious academic reading.

If you’re a professional marketer, CEO, Small Business Owner or CMO, you should absolutely read Quantum Marketing.  Let’s face it, it’s not a page-turner, but it is a mind-bender.  Get ready to have your beliefs about what marketing is all about blown out of the water.

Image: amazon

This article, "Should Small Business Pay Attention to Quantum Marketing?" was first published on Small Business Trends