Legendary American businessman Jack Welch once said: “Change before you have to”. He’s right, because in business, the ability to read the tea leaves, change tack and stay ahead of the market (or at least be among the leading cohort) is a valuable skill to possess.
Marketing is often a change leader enabling businesses to refocus and adapt to consumer trends. It’s marketing’s role to identify future consumer shifts and prepare the business for the changes. However, marketing itself has transformed dramatically in recent times. There have been a variety of reasons for the shift, which will have on impact on many small- and medium-sized businesses.
1. Technology and data lead the way
Marketing now is heavily data driven. There’s been an explosion of technology that has made it considerably easier to see shifts in consumer preference and buying behaviour. For example, financial planners today can easily track website usage, identify what content or pages prospects are looking at and their service preferences, and so on.
There’s a bucketload of low-cost data you can dip into that wasn’t available to smaller businesses five years ago. This technology shift isn’t just limited to consumer data. There’s technology for every component of your marketing program, particularly for managing your marketing campaigns through automation tools.
This means it’s now easier than ever to use your messaging to create a personalised customer journey for potential clients. Moreover, the pervasiveness of technology will help to make marketing activities simpler moving forward.
2. Measurement and ROI
The technology age means it’s now relatively easy to see how your marketing dollar is performing. For example, rather than simply using marketing to create “awareness”, you can now calculate precise percentages of visitors to each web page, campaign landing site, or email you’ve sent.
The speed at which you can tweak a campaign makes marketing more tactical than ever before. This doesn’t mean you don’t need a strategy. It’s quite the opposite, as it’s now possible to build into your strategy the ability to change course (marketers call this “course correct”) faster as more data becomes available. It means you’ll still abide by your strategy, but take less time to market test the effectiveness of the campaign and marketing tactics.
3. One-to-one marketing will continue to evolve
The ability to tailor marketing programs has changed dramatically. You no longer need to create an email campaign targeting a group of potential clients; you can target right down to the individual. Intelligent one-to-one marketing is now the norm.
Given the data you can gather around specific clients – both perspective and existing – it means you can tailor the messaging they receive. For example, a prospective client might visit your website and start looking at and/or downloading material on retirement. By examining the data they’re viewing and downloading, you can acquire information about exactly what they’re looking for with reasonable accuracy.
If you’re smart about it, you can then follow up with an automated campaign that provides your website visitors with more information on this topic, or an opportunity to further examine their requirements with one of your team members. By tailoring the messaging they receive, you’re giving yourself a stronger chance of delivering marketing activities that are relevant to the client.
To sum up, marketing is now cheaper, smarter and easier than ever before. Embrace the opportunities available to you, as some easily accessible research could open your eyes to a wealth of new opportunities to make your marketing more effective.
