London’s best marketing and data minds came together this November at the Festival of Marketing to debate what the future of their industry will bring. The outcomes may shape the coming year but one thing is certain — new trends develop with such speed that they constantly reinvent the marketing landscape and 2016 will be no exception.
For our part, we predict that the following five themes will be key to defining the marketing road ahead.
1. Renewing customer experience
The relationship between customer and brand is as important as ever but has been splintered by technology. Today, a customer can walk into a store and immediately compare the price of a desired product sold by competing retailers on their smartphone. And if they find a cheaper alternative elsewhere or online they will switch without a moment’s thought. In the past, with limited opportunities for interaction, brands could influence how consumers acted; now, the channels of engagement are so numerous and varied that brands are losing a grip on the very connections they need to be nurturing. Mobile has exacerbated this phenomenon by creating micro-moments — cursory experiences of brand contact that bear enormous weight on the decisions that consumers make. Brands seeking to address what the consumer needs must understand what’s driving these moments.
2. Bringing data together
Nothing stays the same for long in marketing — that much we know for sure. While a brand strategy may take into account all the available channels, by the time it’s implemented, another channel is likely to have cropped up. This year it was the iWatch; next year’s remains to be seen. Navigating a complex web of ways to reach consumers is one of the major challenges that brands now face in executing their marketing plans. They need data, and more than that, they need to know how data from different platforms connects so they can piece together consumer stories and create meaningful messages that are delivered seamlessly from touchpoint to touchpoint. Unfortunately, though, they are often unable to access all the data because it is segregated into multiple stacks, rather than housed in a central repository. In 2016, if marketers are serious about upping the standards of customer experience, they will need to push for ways to overcome this challenge with better consumer data integration.
3. Discovering data insights
In spite of its inherent value, data in itself it isn’t enough; when it’s in silos, it can work counterintuitively to what marketers need to achieve. Our own research shows that advertisers are spending money to reach customers in places where customers are not spending time. This gap is symptomatic of the fact that channel performance and value delivery is becoming more opaque as data is accumulated across a greater number of devices but not properly integrated. Marketers need to answer fundamental questions in order to personalise and distribute their content effectively. For example, while they may know that banner ads yield strong clickthroughs and conversion rates, do they know the sites, devices, publishers, ad servers that deliver greater performance value? Gaining a 360 degree audience view and clarity on the channels that are delivering value for brands will be key to targeting consumers with precision in 2016.
4. Putting brand vision first
With all the excitement that technology offers, it’s easy for brands to fall into the trap of centering their efforts on the tools that are out there, rather than using the right tools to fulfill a vital purpose. All brands have a business purpose that forms the essence of their brand vision — and this is where they must start. Marketers need to have a healthy relationship with technology that is focused on utilising the best resources to deliver an exceptional customer experience — what should be at the heart of every brand proposition but can sometimes be lost when we’re trying to offer any experience, not the right one, on new technology. In this way, technology becomes an enabler with the flexibility, adaptability and capability to break down data silos and serve the brand’s essential marketing goals.
5. Clarifying data value
With the customer experience in a state of flux, the merits of the marketing function are coming further under the business spotlight. Managers overseeing tightly controlled budgets want reassurance that initiatives are delivering real value and that they’re worth the costs. Are today’s marketers confident accountability of media agencies and in the transparency of media reporting? Too often brands pay for ads but fail to ascertain their impact. Problems like these with measuring results have in turn given potency to ad-blocking and viewability, putting marketers under increasing pressure to prove that the data they are buying is translating into effective marketing, rather than being wasted on unseen content. In the future, better collaboration between agencies and tech vendors will support marketers to show that brand campaigns are yielding the right results — and subsequently, that ad-tech is still vital to the business.
Marketing’s resurgence brings with it opportunities and challenges in equal measures and finding the best way to navigate the new reality is a priority for everyone involved. Keeping the consumer at the heart of brand strategy, reigniting the customer experience, and finding coherent and meaningful pathways through a tech-savvy population are surely some of the best survival tactics.
By Christian Bartens, CEO and Founder at Datalicious.
PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.
comments powered by Disqus