Defining marketing in a New Era

Thus, the new normal in marketing revolves around the capacity to utilise the latest digital technologies to create a customer experience that is targeted and creative. Read this article for more on why it’s important to adopt technologies into your business.

The role of a modern marketer

Ultimately, the implementation of digital technology into the realm of marketing has evolved the role of a marketer with astonishing speed. As a result, marketing is now recognised as a major driver for growth, with 83% of global CEO’s supporting this statement. Because of these developments, marketers in our current era are greatly dependent upon and must adapt to the new age. For example, marketers used to face the problem of a lack of feedback, and now the challenge is absorbing the feedback. To best face this challenge, this transition involves adopting a customer-centric focus and forecasting. For a better insight into which specific technologies a market can use, take a look at this article.

Customer-centric focus

There is no doubt that every business recognises the importance of meeting customers’ needs and creating value by adhering to the customer’s desires. Through sales, customer relationship management (CRM), and various other sources, companies can collect vast amounts of data. If marketers use this information effectively, they can analyse trends and define customers’ current preferences and needs, ensuring they know what the customer actually wants. Previously, companies had sparse data, resulting in limited insights, and ultimately a limited ability to measure impact. The digital age has actively provided marketers with vast amounts of data to overcome this challenge, and so, marketers must not neglect that now is the time to learn and grow with these technologies. Approaches that were cutting edge a few years ago are quickly becoming obsolete, with more and more approaches emerging at a constant pace. The importance of learning and adopting these technologies cannot be better stressed.

As such, creating well-profiled consumer segments has never been easier. Using data sourced from internet campaign cookies for example, marketers can store stateful data (items in a shopping cart), save user preferences and record user activity. Storing behaviour information is only one of the many benefits of digital marketing and provides marketers with the opportunity not only for success but also for measurement. This information helps marketers to understand the customers’ motivations and behaviours better. Furthermore, it allows marketers to advertise services that target audience groups according to variables including age, gender and location. By targeting audience groups on more specific variables, marketers can create a personalised message, introducing micro-segments. Nowadays, this is more important than ever. Customers want to feel as if they are having a one-on-one experience with each interaction with the business and not like another generic number in their customer base. That’s why the role of a marketer has evolved in its capacity to create these customer experiences that are targeted, compared to the previous advertising, which revolved around broad offerings and experiences across large consumer segments. With 74% of customers feeling frustrated when website content is not personalised, it’s a no-brainer to personalise your content.

Forecasting

Traditionally, in order to gain insights into the efficacy of campaigns, marketing metrics have had a retrospective focus, using past behaviour as a metric. These days, a modern marketer looks ahead. Here are some of our predictions no marketer can ignore. Foreseeing unmet customer demands, spotting opportunities customers didn’t realise were there and uncovering subtle but treatable pain points all fall under the umbrella of a marketer’s skillset who forecasts. With the vast amount of data available for marketers, data analytics can predict trends and future variations, informing the marketer to make the right decision. Setting goals and looking into the future are what give marketers a 429 percent greater chance of reporting successful campaigns.

However, to be able to utilise digital technologies in their most effective form, marketers must be able to grow along with technology and adapt. One way to utilise data is with data management systems that can store and analyse data. This will help counter the complexity of data, as although the benefits of the influx of data are clear, there is no denying that there is also great difficulty in mastering its use. Here’s an article on more on using past experiences to avoid failure in your marketing strategy.

In summary, the new digital age has revolutionised the marketing realm, evolving the role of a marketer to one that is pivotal for a business’ success. As such, it is crucial for marketers to understand their role and what it entails, as well as how to utilise these digital technologies best, adopting a customer-centric focus and forecasting approach. To achieve this, the commitment to these technologies must be made and the relevant skills learnt.

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