Cutting through the noise – the future of marketing

The brands we remember, and love outshine their competition. It is not just because their appearance is attractive, or that their customer service is good. It is because they deliver a coherent experience in which the brand delivers a unique, individual journey that goes beyond ‘just’ a digital marketing experience; they cut through the noise, rather than simply adding to it. How do you cut through the noise? What are the key drivers of the future marketing experience? And how do you keep up with the fast-changing marketing organization as a marketing leader?

The rapidly changing face of marketing

The expectations of consumers are rising and the demand for engaging content across channels, in every type of format, in real-time is high. We all want a sublime Starbucks-like experience with a brand. In effect, we are witnessing a data and content explosion:

• Consumers expect to interact with brands 24/7, at every touchpoint.
• The one-way dialog from the brand to the consumer has been replaced by a two-way conversation.
• Immediacy is the new watchword as brands are expected to respond now, not in a week’s time.
• Personalization rests on the effective orchestration of contextualized content.
• Relevancy is becoming the next battleground; demanding more personalized or well-timed initiatives requires more data capacity than ever.

What should we, as companies and especially as marketing leaders, do to manage these expectations? The keywords are data and connection.

“Customer data is at the heart of a great experience”.

Data-driven real-time marketing as a growth driver, now and in the future

As customers crave personalized engagement delivered through multiple channels, it is crucial to deliver the right experience, at the right time, at every touchpoint. Data is at the heart of a great experience. Marketing teams that were traditionally more focused on brand awareness and demand generation, now become a lot more data-focused. Due to the continuous interaction with brands, there is an exponential increase in the volumes of data available. Think for example about your personalized interface or suggestions after buying a product or service via a website. This real-time data enables us to get insights into every touchpoint of the customer journey. This allows marketers to gain an unprecedented level of customer insights, to eventually deliver customized experiences in real-time and at scale.

“Data-driven real-time marketing lays the foundation for a longer relationship and brand loyalty with the consumer”.

Real-time marketing can process, analyze, and leverage data to swiftly enhance digital commerce campaigns, increase brand awareness, customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and customer retention. More specifically, data-driven real-time marketing is one of the most sought-after and fast-growing areas in brand development.

• It enables marketers to connect instantly with their customers through extensive personalization and contextualization.
• Convergence of technology, data, and creativity helps to win in marketing.
• Innovative technologies and increasing use of data must be managed to activate and captivate consumers.

Leading marketers are merging creative inspiration with real-time signals to create brand awareness and engagement at an unprecedented scale. The convergence of technology, creativity, and data is not only possible but essential; when the free-flowing creative process meets the precision of advanced data use with the right technological tools, they can create a powerful impact to make sure marketing wins and accelerates above the competition. Innovative technologies and exponentially increasing data must be managed to activate and captivate customers with data-driven, contextualized marketing experiences, eventually driving brand success.

The marketing leader is the orchestrator of the connected marketing experience

The marketing leader plays a key role in creating a connected marketing experience. They must answer important questions with regards to the interactions consumers have with their brand:

• What do customers want and when do they want it?
• What touchpoints are your customers using?
• What are your customers saying about their experience?
• How do you deliver a seamless end-to-end journey?

“It requires a bold approach for CMOs to connect the dots to achieve future-readiness with a connected, data-driven marketing ecosystem”.

It requires a bold approach for CMOs to connect the dots between these wide ranges of activities and requirements to achieve future readiness with an ecosystem that embraces data-driven real-time marketing and focuses on connecting with customers and driving sustainable growth. How to do that?

1. Marketing organization: Make sure you make people and culture part of the change within your organization. The success of a redesign of the marketing organization is very much dependent on the culture and people within the organization. Highly engaged teams show up to 22% greater profitability and are almost five times more likely to perform their best work. Important to add agencies to support this.
2. Customer activation: Organize yourself around the customer journey in an end-to-end operating model (holistic marketing organization) – do not only focus on the marketing department but connect all departments that are directly or indirectly connected to the customer journey: marketing, sales, services, IT, etc.
3. Marketing technology: Design and deploy the right set of solutions and tools, marketing technology (MarTech) is used to understand what it is that customers want, why they want it and what they intend to do next. MarTech drives customer and marketing team interaction, measure effectiveness, and facilitate data-driven decisions. Marketing leaders that utilize 70% of the MarTech stack’s capabilities will achieve 20% better marketing ROI than peers.

How should companies, or more specifically marketing leaders, take the lead as an orchestrator of a connected ecosystem? And what are the key building blocks of a connected marketing experience? We will help you out! In the upcoming three blogs we will dive into the three main topics above:

• Customer Activation
• Marketing Organization
• Marketing Technology