Because of increasing device proliferation, the Internet of things and the digitisation of offline channels, the choices for marketers have become even more numerous, making their role and responsibilities more complex.
This is according to Quinton Pienaar, CEO of Agilitude, who notes marketers today have more channels to choose from than ever before.
He believes the continuous emergence of new disruptive tools in digital marketing technologies is driving marketers to equip themselves in facing these new challenges.
Marketers should not be too focused on designing traditional mass media campaigns, but should drive strategic transformation in their organisations through the use of digital, he says.
"Marketing should move from a large broadcast of messages to a one-on-one personalised communications based on customer needs, preferences, historic purchases and current relationship with the organisation."
Businesses should invest in technologies that allow marketers to understand the customer and map their journey with the organisation, adds Pienaar.
He explains by using big data, marketers can develop smarter, more relevant programmes in their mix - incorporating data-driven insights into their planning and then using the new robust data they get out of those programmes to inform their future plans.
Beatrice Jonah, marketing consultant at ThoughtWorks, says organisations that are customer-focused tend to have greater success in analysing the journey of their customer across multiple systems as compared to product-focused organisations.
These organisations have strategies in place to follow and understand their prospective and current customers, which in turn will take them from marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads, notes Jonah.
Having a greater understanding of the various stages of their prospective customers increases the success rate of converting them into customers, she adds.
The use of marketing automation tools allow data-driven marketers to collect, integrate, manage lead process, and analyse data, says Jonah.
She adds combining these tools with traditional marketing will result in higher quality data, better segmentation, and higher rate of customer acquisition.
Share