It could say that there are some bugs in Marketing 4.0 that why it is not enough to put the enterprise into growth and need Marketing 5.0 to solve the non-growth and stagnation problems. Of course, the concept of Marketing 4.0 proposed by Kotler in 2013 has indeed attracted great attention from academics and managers.

Although Kotler put forward the concept of “integration” in the book “Marketing Revolution 4.0”, he also introduced the tools that can be used and how to operate them, but he did not clarify how marketing should be integrated or fusion. This poses a huge challenge for entrepreneurs in the field of practice. I think when we go through the concept of Marketing 4.0, yet we still found that it is mainly lacking in the following two aspects.

First, there is no in-depth insight into the essence of the company’s problems, and a lot of energy is still spent on new acquisitions and promotions. Why is the enterprise stagnant and unable to grow? If the essence of the problem is not found out, it is difficult to really solve the problems faced by the enterprise just by using more channels or methods to do the same thing.

Second, since integration is proposed, how should it be done? “Marketing Revolution 4.0” did not propose a set of feasible models or frameworks.

For example, “Marketing Revolution 3.0” put forward the very important concept of big data CRM, “Marketing Revolution 4.0” discussed integration, paid attention to social media, and also proposed the concept of social customer relationship management (Social Customer Relationship Management, SCRM) needs to be integrated, but it doesn’t make it clear how to integrate traditional CRM with social media SCRM.

As of the past years of working and consulting experience in recent years, most companies have “every marketing campaign is very successful, but the sales performance year by year does not increase”. Through exchanges and the thoughts from marketers and entrepreneurs, we found that there are several common challenges faced by enterprises such as the fierce competition in new market environments, the users’ traffic proportion being occupied, the increasing CPA (Customer Acquisition Cost), and the loss of existing customers.

Meanwhile, there are Marketing 5.0 must-solve problems of stagnation and non-growth of enterprises that cannot be solved by existing marketing theories. Thus, the bugs in Market 4.0 and get fixed in 5.0.

The specific digital proof will be explained in detail in another column I will release in a series next, or you also can do research about it by yourself. Of course, what I have provided or shared here is just some idea or thought that be able to help you to ignite and activate your potential knowledge and skills through your own traits. See you in my next article we will continue to discuss what gets fixed in Marketing 5.0.