If you work in technology environments (software manufacturer, integrator or partner) or in the digital marketing industry, you will know that these are two of the areas that have had more reinvention in recent years in terms of methodologies, best practices, concepts … and are constantly evolving.
MarTech, as described by Amazon, is the “software used by marketers to optimize marketing efforts and achieve goals” . This leverages technology to plan, execute and measure campaigns and other marketing tactics. Such tools are going to enable streamlined marketing processes in an omnichannel ecosystem with multiple customer touch points.
The term MarTech (not to be confused with AdTech, which basically allows campaigns to be transferred to users and brings together different advertising tactics and management tools such as DSPs and SSPs) brings with it an almost inescapable link between Marketing and Information Technology.
Marketing teams have an imperative need to keep up with new user consumption habits, which forces them to acquire new knowledge, to be always up to date, and to be the great standard bearers of brands. Both in terms of market trends and technological trends that help to achieve their objectives.
Want to know just 3 of the key key points in today’s digital environment that marketers need to master?
1. Handles omnichannel with ease
It starts with a Customer Centric strategy, since the user expects a unified response and will interact through different channels of communication, purchase or feedback (online and offline); he expects a real-time response through the channel he has chosen and that this response takes into account his previous interactions. Almost nothing. We would need an army to get it right every time. Technology provides the tools to get closer and closer to our users (no matter what stage of the customer journey they are in) and to impact them at the ideal moment with the right message.
Between Omnichannel and Data Driven is Big Data & Analytics, with the comprehensive study of consumer behavior information, to make better business decisions through descriptive, predictive and even prescriptive analytical models.
As part of omnichannel, you must develop ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline) strategies and metrics, i.e., online search and in-store purchase, or its reverse version, in-store viewing and subsequent online purchase.
Objective: to satisfy their demand and of course push them towards the purchase.
2. Mastering the context SoLoMo (Social Location Mobile)
Esto hace referencia ni más ni menos que al usuario que consume en el lugar en el que se encuentra. Ese usuario lo que demanda es un tipo de información muy concreta, basada exclusivamente en su localización y en el producto que desea adquirir. Consume contenido desde sus redes sociales, a través de móviles y además produce nuevo contenido en base a su experiencia. Gracias a la georreferenciación las marcas pueden conectar con su audiencia y entregarles promociones y ofertas justo cuando están en las inmediaciones y en el momento preciso.
Tenemos por tanto un consumidor experto que también genera y comparte vivencias con las marcas y el resto de usuarios, con un grado cada vez más alto de especialización de los diversos productos o servicios.
How to be attractive to them?
We must understand how they interact with our brand, their buying process or buyer journey, what they consume, how and when they do it; here technology plays a very important role. Variables such as how many times the user has visited your website, where they come from and what their IP address is are very relevant for technology and data scientists to detect, process, analyze and interpret this information to go beyond attracting users, providing the opportunity to strengthen relationships with them and make them last over time.
What concepts should we have in our roadmap so as not to be left behind in this marketing/sales symbiosis?
- Choose the right technology. There are endless tutorials, demos, one pagers, available to understand how different tools gather and process data from different digital channels; they will allow you to assign a unique ID that can then be used by your data scientists to analyze and interpret the information.
- Your goal is hyper-personalization. After so many years associating personalization with sending emails with the name in health, technology helps us to work on the concept of hyper-personalization both in the communication with the customer and in the chosen channel.
On customer communication: we can create individualized communication strategies and automate them based on real-time user data and behavior. For example, taking into account the user’s purchase history, device data, the tab that the user is consulting, … we can send attractive SMS with dynamic fields both in the text used and in the images.
Regarding the chosen channel. Ask yourself: When do we increase the probability that a user interacts? Carefully choose the business rules to determine when to send the communication and what specific actions trigger: call, registration, download, …
As we have already seen, marketing and sales are obliged to collaborate, coexist, and join forces to achieve the objectives set. Offering an excellent user experience, achieving more sales, with the highest ticket, will be the result of choosing the right tools and understanding the business from a unified point of view.
Want to learn more about how consumer-focused technology can increase your sales? Click here
Originally published in our Global ROI Hub newsletter.
