Key Speakers: Kerry O’Shea Gorgone (Director- Project Strategy & Training, MarketingProfs) & Mr. Michael Trapani (Product Marketing Manager, Watson Marketing)

Premise

It is a well known fact that the amount of marketing data available is immense now. In fact, an estimate puts it that each year 2.5 quintillion (18 zeros) bytes of data get produced and ninety percent of all time data has been generated in the last two years. This provides a great opportunity for marketers to engage with customers, yet proper usage of the same needs to be done in order to achieve such ambitions.

Existing Trends

We are existing in a golden age for marketing provided the brand leverages its public facing abilities. Thus different digital channels need to be used up. It is now impossible to be an outlier on price terms due to the fact that there is enormous sharing of information among customers. Entire teams are now created to facilitate such engagement. Data collection is not at all a problem as a lot is available anyway. The proper business analytics using this data is the main challenge. It is important for the brand to excel in the top two media by which its customers search on social media. Whether those two would include Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or anything else purely depends on the digital marketing strategy and need. But those two must be completely well owned at.

Dark Corners of Data

In spite of the enormous data available, several dark corners exist which are untapped. Not even social media can deliver such precise information. In order to reduce this gap, two tactics have been widely successfully used. One of them is URL Tracking and the other is Anonymous Visitor Tracking. URL Tracking allows traceable links to be created just like breadcrumbs can do in forests of the real world. URL shortening is one method that can be applied to execute this task. Anonymous Visitor Tracking involves progressive profiling of visitors. So all visitors need to be clubbed under buyer persona categories so that individually targeted marketing messages may be delivered to them.

Data Challenge

As discussed already, data collection may be a challenge but less so than its processing to create meaningful data warehousing. For this incremental moves may include steps such as CRM being linked to the marketing cloud or the systems being integrated with one another through smart devices. Through such data collected, implicit preferences need to be tagged so that personalized content may be delivered. Thus mass mailing may be replaced by push messaging once the customer gets identified to be of a certain type which prefers the latter media to the former. The mobile phone is now proving to be the greatest source of such critical data. It was earlier assumed that mobile phones were handy devices thus used while on the move. However, that myth has been shattered by the fact that people are now using mobile phones at all times. It is the most accessible device even at home, and not the computer as was previously assumed.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) throws up lost of implications based on user personas. For example it can provide insights on early adopters. Such people wish to engage with modern technology irrespective of its use simply because they are fascinated by innovations. Crucial business intelligence supplied by AI has confirmed that weather plays very important role in decision making. Thus weather data collection is of paramount importance. Disruption normalizes all forms of technology. Chatbots are a method of extracting crucial insights. They rely on AI or machine learning. They exist on all forms of chatting interfaces such as Google Allo, Whatsapp or Messenger.  In order to survive, marketers need to decide whether they need to go for multi-channel single vendors or a multiple of them. Platform players are very useful but no one can claim to be able to resolve all problems. In fact, vendors must be willing to integrate into other systems as there is not yet any one single solution. Even the Internet of Things (IoT) used to be primarily on the B2B segment earlier but is now much more customer facing.

Prominent Vendors & Devices

Microsoft has already announced that they will shortly be out with washing machines and refrigerators that can respond to IoT devices. It is likely that such innovations with consumer durable products will come from Samsung or LG as they are major producers of such products. Companies that collect all this granular data about customers are not yet willing to share with marketers. This is actually a positive trend as marketers do not require such deep insights but only relevant ones. It has also been observed that chatting platforms differ based on region. The I-Messenger is very big in North America due to the large number of I Phone users. Also in North America, not much of international communication is needed as the domestic territory itself is vast. In Europe and in Latin America, Whatsapp rules the roost due to the cross-border connections the platform provides. At such places smartphones get delivered with Whatsapp already present by default. Line is extremely popular in Japan, Thailand and the rest of East Asia. We Chat is ubiquitous in China. We Chat has moved on from being simply into chatting services but now is more of an OS. The likes of Kik Messenger and Facebook’s native Messenger also have their respective local presence. 

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