3 minute readPublished 15 December
There’s been much written about the accelerating and changing face of marketing over the last few years. Big data has, without doubt, turned the art of marketing into the science it now is. It has been said many times; the mad man is now the math man.
Today’s shopper has adapted to take full advantage of the digital revolution. How we shop, how we socialise, how we communicate with each other has had a profound impact on the way in which companies are selling and marketing to us. Never before have they known so much about us. Everything we do as consumers online – our location, our preferences, our searches, our purchases – is all captured, collated and interpreted by the new marketing scientists; The Analysts.
The analysis of the data has become a technical art form that is no longer the remit of the traditional agency or creative digital agency team. It is now the domain of the geek (yes, they really do rule the world) who sift and interpret this mountain of data that each one of us leaves in our wake – every time we go online.
The analysts give companies invaluable insight into the minds and pockets of their current customers. In other words they arm traditional marketers with segmentation knowledge to target the right messages to the right person at the perfect moment so it hits our neuro sweet-spots – and bingo!
If you take it back to the basics nothing changes - it’s still about right person, right time, right place. But as today’s shoppers become more complex in their choices about where, when and how to buy, so does the marketing technology needed to track them.
Everything we do as consumers online is captured, collated and interpreted
So, does this mean that the ‘old’ way of advertising and marketing is dead and buried? The answer is without a doubt NO! The only difference is there is now more information on customers than ever before and it’s exciting to think how that data can influence at a strategic level. The insight gleaned, allows marketers to devise ever more creative ways to reach out to their audiences.
There has been a blurring of the agencies. Whereas before a company would employ separate agencies to manage its creative, PR, marketing and digital requirements – an agency now needs to deliver fully integrated campaigns, creating a seamless consumer experience across all channels and delivery formats, to reflect the way in which todays’ shoppers are choosing to shop.
And it isn’t just for the consumer market. The b2b market is subject to the same rules. Even in our business lives we are still ‘consumers’ – it’s an exciting prospect to think that businesses can more accurately than ever target and influence key purchasers.
