Digital Darwinism Predicted as Changes in Consumer Behavior Transform Marketing Landscape – MarTech Advisor

The next few years are going to be transformative from a marketing perspective partly driven by a new generation of marketing technologies but also continual changes in consumer behavior, which will lead to Digital Darwinism. Stephen Ingledew at Aprimo sheds some light on the evolutionary process that sees digital marketing embedding itself within corporate organizations in many countries

What is Digital Darwinism? Quite simply it means that when technology and society are changing faster than organizations can adapt, the only positive way to respond is to become customer driven. As a consequence, organizations will need to radically evolve their marketing operations to become customer driven.

To promote customer-centric operations, financial organizations should ask themselves, How are we relevant to a consumers life and how do our products address real-life changing consumer needs?

Failing to address the real and changing needs of consumers will open the way for the emerging group of market disrupters that will address those needs instead. Established businesses can too easily assume that because they are the biggest and have the most resources, they will be the survivors. Darwinism proves that isnt the case. Businesses that adapt and change will succeed, as opposed to those that continue to stick with what they have always done.

The right marketing operations platform

Within this rapidly evolving marketing environment, the selection of the most appropriate marketing operations platform is important. Securing the right marketing operations platform can help transform the way businesses interact with customers. Executives should seek a platform that supports the key foundations of marketing issues including: governance, risk management and supplier relationships. Technology has always been around on a basic level it facilitates automation and efficiency but it does not in itself create a customer driven businesses.

Technical advances should be combined with innately human marketing skills, such as creativity, an imagination and empathy - skills that technology cannot replace. As time goes on and the possibility of more jobs being replaced by technology increases, we must find a space that allows marketers to add value through their human skills. Essentially, freeing marketers to be marketers.

Furthermore, marketing execs should take a step beyond the front-line marketing team and ask questions like, How will my platform support aspects of the wider marketing ecosystem such as legal, risk, sales channels and third party suppliers? The right technology should break down silos within a company and provide a keen focus on client contact, the customer need and purpose of your business. The focus shouldnt just be on the technology. Placing concentrations beyond technology is valuable because otherwise efforts will only be put towards efficiency, which doesnt exactly motivate employees to get out of bed in the morning.

Within businesses there is a need to give consistency with personality. The brand is personality - it is not the company colors nor the logo. Customers relate to personality, and they expect that personality to have a certain level of consistency. The more comfortable customers are with a personality; the more engaged customers will feel. However, within marketing, different channels are often used such as mobile, telephone or social: frequently each channel can give a different experience or facet of your personality. The different channels can lead to confusion for your customer. By having a single source of marketing truth providing transparency and consistency of message tone and style, a marketing operations platform can ensure the root core of your personality is amplified across channels. While still enabling creative conversation, always provide an opportunity to give consistency with personality.

Marketing Operations helped me sleep at night

The best marketing operations platform provides governance and control while still driving operational efficiencies.

The right technology platform enables you to have confidence that your marketing messages are compliant. Once you have compliance confidence, you can empower your teams to be more creative and co-create with customers. We need governance and control this is where marketing operations technology becomes invaluable.

Regulators have the power to investigate, fine and potentially sanction the senior person who is ultimately responsible for signing off marketing from a regulatory perspective. Therefore, as senior executives are distanced from day-to-day operations, they need the assurance that their marketing messages are compliant and legal.

Once you have that confidence and competence, teams can self-regulate but to do this there is a need for governance and control, which is where technology comes into its own.

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Digital Darwinism Predicted as Changes in Consumer Behavior Transform Marketing Landscape - MarTech Advisor