The increasing availability of broadband, both mobile and fixed, is helping shape SA's digital marketing landscape.
That's according to Gareth Slaven, CEO at online media, Internet and e-commerce company, Ensight.
"A lot more people are starting to interact with the Internet as the primary source of information. For example, people now go into stores and, right from their phones, can compare prices of products or get information on the product or retailer they are shopping at, which affects business in a profound way," notes Slaven.
There is also an increase in ability to track and report on return on investment from digital marketing, says Slaven, adding that this goes beyond counting how many clicks a campaign receives and how many of those clicks got to a particular page (the traditional conversion model).
"Using the right marketing automation tools, campaigns can be tracked all the way from anonymous visitors to customers and then to brand advocates," he says. "The foundation of an effective multi-channel strategy relies on the data marketers possess and the quality of this data. This allows marketers to segment their market effectively."
By not just using incumbent ways, Slaven believes marketers can now segment their data based on how their audience is engaging with their digital assets. Once they have identified the right segments, they can deliver relevant content to each of those segments over the channel (e-mail, Web, social etc.) they most prefer.
"There's then the collating of data from these multiple channels, which brands can use to drive actionable insight, and then determine the most profitable areas for further investment," he adds. "This is a simple task if an organisation has the right mechanisms in place, such as a single platform."
He notes, however, that most campaign data still goes into Excel and then it is a difficult manual process to collate and use it to build future intelligent campaigns.
"Everything that users do on one of your digital assets, whether it be your Web site, an e-mail they receive, or a social media link that they click on, should be recorded in a central database," he says. "Armed with this data, the marketer can build intelligent campaigns. Data will assist in understanding your audience's behaviour, segmenting that audience, then creating and designing a campaign using both testing and scheduling."
Brands must remember that a campaign is a living thing, urges Slaven, observing that through testing and refinement, the organisation can determine who its prospects are and how far they are into the buying journey.
"Gone are the days where a content management system suffices for your Web site. In order to serve relevant and contextual messaging to each segment a brand is targeting, brands need to evolve their platforms to single integrated and intelligent platforms."
He points out that there should also be an effective integration of traditional, maturing, and new media channels and tactics, with traditional media carrying calls to action to drive people to new media channels.
"Once brands have the potential customer recorded on new media channels, they can build automated communications programmes to increase the likelihood of them becoming a customer. For example, a TV ad could have a call to action to SMS a number to request a quote, or a radio ad could have a call to action for a listener to send a tweet using a specific hashtag. All these calls to action can result in the recording of an anonymous potential customer into a known potential customer," explains Slaven.
Additionally, for brands that are actively using a multi-channel platform, the system can check if this contact already exists, how they have engaged with them before, what they have bought before and then deliver contextual communications back to the person.
"Marketers should bear in mind that each customer is experiencing the brand in a human-to-human capacity, making the experience more personal and direct. This means brand teams need to become more agile, a trend that is already in place in developed markets such as Europe and the US where brands are using internal resources more so that they can respond quickly," adds Slaven.
In his view, this ability to move quickly means that brands need to have the platforms in place that allow them to listen, engage and publish to the Web in real-time.
"Content should be easily available on all channels, including mobile. The experience a mobile user has should mimic the experience that the laptop or tablet user has," concludes Slaven.
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