Over the past few years, through my involvement in the aftermarket, I have witnessed fundamental changes in our marketing "ecosystem." It started intuitively but became empirical as I observed a shift in the effectiveness of traditional marketing strategies and tactics. The nature of business in the aftermarket has changed to the point that marketing as practiced heretofore is rapidly diminishing in effectiveness.

Over the past several months I have been reporting on that shift, referring to the "new" approach as Next Generation Marketing (NGM). In this final installment I want to cover what I see as the remaining critical elements of NGM. Then I can finish the series by explaining why it is vitally important that aftermarket practitioners embrace this foundational change in how we market our goods and services.

The three pieces of the new marketing puzzle that were covered in my last three articles are:

• Zero-based
• Customer-centric
• Technology enabled

The final two are:

• Collaboratively applied
• Fact-based

The more traditional approach to marketing in the aftermarket has perpetuated “what we have done” marketing over “what works now” marketing. The “what we have done” method relies heavily on techniques that have gone unchanged for decades, like print advertising, countermen/salesmen spiffs and promotions like sweepstakes, parts assortments, cabinets, apparel, gift certificates, collectables and so on. These have been propagated by “home grown” marketing executives at every level who are resistant to change. NGM demands and thrives on change.

The result is that traditional aftermarket marketing often relies on two self-serving perspectives that often conspire against themselves and those who matter most, customers in the bays who are fixing vehicles and funding our paychecks.

At their self-serving worst, suppliers are product-centric, wanting to brag about their product and how well they make it, distribute it, support it, etc. At times it's like listening to a new parent going on ad nauseam about their beautiful new baby and the college fund they have already started. On the other hand, channel partners at their self-serving worst are program-centric, choosing to focus on their bundle of services. All too frequently these "bundles" are built to an internally-generated blueprint. Instead of being designed around what customers really want and then continually refreshed, they were designed to serve the distributor and have stagnated from the resistance to change mentioned earlier.

NGM doesn't change the aim of persuasion; it only changes how we go about generating it.

Which brings us to “fact-based” marketing. Real value from a customer perspective is not ambiguous, but only the customer can define it. Once discovered, it is usable to powerfully persuade the customer toward either a product or a service, or both. NGM is based on facts, not opinions. Today’s automotive aftermarket is too dynamic and fluid for guessing. Channel partners and customers have discernible expectations and needs that can be easily identified through research. The collection of that information is critical for the construction of NGM program. As an associate of mine is fond of saying, “More dangerous than ignorance is the illusion of knowledge.” Next Generation Marketers must be clear about what they know and more importantly, what they don’t know.

In a nutshell, Next Generation Marketing is about “what works now” rather than “how we’ve always done it.” It’s about being customer-centric, not product/program-centric. It’s about facts, not opinions or suppositions. And it is about the collective “we” of suppliers working with channel partners: not “them vs. us” where brands and programs vie for the loyalty of installers.

NGM is a new way of thinking and approaching the marketplace. Are you ready to change?