The Evolution of Marketing Data [Infographic]

Being a marketer, I am always a big fan of personalization of communication. Actually, its far easier than what most marketers think. The basic fundamental ingredient to this is how you manage your data and databases at the backend. Subsequently, its imperative for marketers to understand the touch points and the activities history/log of your consumers. If you can bring these ingredients then successful campaigns can only be a by product of that.

The below is an interesting info-graphics that shows an interesting evolution to personalization of communication. Though, I have to say, with all the tools and segmentation available, if marketers are still sticking to the 1960 then please don’t expect results of today. For being successful, you need to match the consumer to the channel to the message…and ensure you move from dissemination to conversation….. 

Youth & Brand Building…

India will witness youth advantage over others, likes of China, America, Europe, etc,  and being tech savvy youth, it’s important to understand the strength, however equally need to acknowledge the impact or adversary effect will this have on marketing or the brand plans. Younger generation as commonly witnessed by all of us – are though nuclear but are more connected than any of their predecessors.

And here is the challenge …firstly to reach out to the consumer and customer that are fragmented and at the places or property(s) of “their” visit and secondly…to keep the brand message consistent on all means of communication, be it facebook, twitter, TV, newspaper, etc.  Hence it has transpired into greater challenges for brand managers purely with the share volume of communication channels | means in existence now. Of course, with many countries and markets that marketer is dealing with does make things more bad. Though I have to admit that this (digital marketing) has given us the true sense of the word “Segmentation”….provide we do our math or analysis right.

While marketers are taking initial steps to venture into the deep blue sea of digital outreach, from the desktop, to the laptop, and now simply the mobile... digital marketing trends across real-life and virtual boundaries are closing in. Digital marketing trends have moved from the already-erstwhile web browser utility to the efficiency of the mobile browser. What with the mobile phone picking up as a prime source of information exchange especially in countries like India, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, etc where most of the information exchange in most parts of the country happens over a mobile device. Equally recent years has kicked off to a greater start with marketing taking a leap towards collective wisdom and reliance on positive social networking with Social Media Marketing. Though this also proved to be a challenge for marketers and brand manager - as living in a reactionary society, most of our actions are reaction to the stimuli leading most marketers worry about how people will react (as any person with a page or blog has turned into a critic) to their presence on any social media network or its initiatives. Hence, it has become imperative for brand manager to exercise caution and enough homework before venturing into the deep blue.

Over the recent years digital marketing trends have picked up like no other. It has been a humble but efficient beginning. Though each year has seen a whole new twist to the digital marketing tale, and coming years will bring more chaos than ever for marketers or brand manager all across. But I actually feel (with whatever marketing experience that I have) that we are still in the initial discovery or educatory phase of new age marketing.

Before I get carried on….would like to summarize that while we emphasize on brand building, it’s would be evident to acknowledge and analyze the new age communication radar to achieve an intuitive and collective | universal brand building exercise.

Basics to using your website as a marketing tool

It’s no more a secret that a website has emerged as the single most effective marketing tool in the hands of a businessperson today. Through a website, one can effectively tell customers about themselves along with their products and services. The wise thing is to focus one’s efforts on a website to ensure increased internet traffic, which will ultimately lead to increased sales. Here are some of the basic things that will help you use your website as an effective marketing tool.

Old news is no news. This is true for a website also. It is important to update the content on a website on a regular basis. By adding a few new things at least once a week, you can be sure to attract people, who will keep coming back on a regular basis to see what's new. Attracting people is one thing but what is more important is to retain them. To keep visitor’s interest alive, provide them with interesting reading material instead of boring business details.

Care should be taken to make the website search engine optimised (SEO). The content, the images used and even the name of the website (read company) should be search engine optimised! SEO has become an indispensable tool, which ensures thousands or even millions of hits a day. It can be safely concluded that no other kind of Internet marketing can be as effective or is capable of driving as much traffic as search engine optimization is.

When using website as a marketing tool, it is important to go beyond branding. It is important to create a unique logo or image for a website that is memorable and is also able to say much more than words can.

In today’s border-less economy where customer interactions are not hindered by geography and time zones, websites should be made more personal and interactive. Using blogs and being active on various online communities will help you get in touch with customers from anywhere in the world and at any time of day. Your posts will keep you in people’s memory and will help sell your products and services even while you are not around.

For more personal touch, mentioning yourself by name and using pictures is a great way to go about it. It only makes things easy as people like to know there are human beings on the other side of the screen. It’s also a good idea to run your own ads on your site. One can use different ads that link to services and products available on your business website.

One should consciously work towards making their website an authority site on a niche topic. This will help the site getting noticed much easily than when one tries to appeal to a broad audience. By catering to a limited audience, it is easy to attract that niche market. Though its sounds small but remember on a global scene, a niche also translate into millions of people all over the world!