I was thrilled to be introduced to Mike Saunders, CEO of DigitLab, a Digital Marketing Agency based in South Africa, through a connection I made when I was teaching in Switzerland a couple of years ago. We have connected on video Skype across the ocean several times and I have continued to be impressed with his company and his brand and the great strides they are making in the digital space. DigitLab has seen significant growth over the past 24 months and I could not be more excited for him.
He recently posted about 4 trends to look for in digital marketing in 2015:
Personalization
The potential returns offered by new technologies and online data mean that organizations and brands are going to increasingly move away from blanket marketing towards personalization. In other words, they’re going to switch from mass consumerism to mass personalization.
We’re not talking about customization here, says Mike, which is tailoring products to individual client requests, but rather customizing specific products to specific clusters of clients.
Customers want individual value and individual assurance. “When they get this then we’re going to start seeing some really great marketing taking place,” states Mike. “With the technologies that are in place now, we can actually start to create this personalized service, both in content delivery and service delivery and in a variety of different other factors.”
Actionable analytics
Until quite recently all online data took time to analyze; statisticians had to turn data into graphs so they could then be consumed and actioned upon by organizations. Now, however, with the invention of real-time analytics as well as crunching and visualization tools businesses can understand data far better, far quicker.
This innovation translates into companies being empowered to move more quickly in the marketing space – they can make informed, opportune decisions and create responsive marketing strategies. They can also react speedily if something goes wrong in a campaign.
A focus on customer journey
Marketers operating on the cutting edge are those that recognize that our physical and digital lives are continuing to merge in ever more complex and inextricable ways. They therefore look for ways to create marketing opportunities via both physical and traditional avenues and digital ones.
The astute marketers of 2015 will therefore be those who are less concerned with single channel conversion but rather concern themselves with the entire customer journey, which nowadays often involves people interacting across all channels on the road to conversion.
“The focus is moving away from conversion measurement towards understanding the customer journey,” says Mike. “If we can understand the customer journey then we can really start to look both at the digital and physical realms to be able to work out how people are buying and experiencing our brands.
“For example, people don’t go onto Facebook to make a purchase, but a Facebook post could be the influencing factor towards a purchase two or three interactions down the line. So focus on the customer journey is going to become more important than the focus on conversion optimization of a particular channel.”
A seamless customer experience
One of the major pain points for consumers engaging with companies that operate both online and offline is disjointed and unsatisfactory customer experiences. This year will see brands creating more unified customer-facing services.
Such a change requires a coming together of previously separate divisions as well as heightened internal collaboration. A primary insight for firms and brands is realizing that customers see them as a single unit, so if different branches of the business operate differently from one another or in isolation, customers will certainly experience complications, inefficient service, frustrations, and more.
Businesses need to adopt what Mike calls a ‘single customer view’, which is about understanding how consumers interact with the brand as a whole. Only by approaching your operations with a holistic understanding of your customers’ omnichannel engagements with your brand will you understand the importance of providing a seamless customer experience and so action it.
