Many people think that Marketing is single and it's about advertising and promotions. But, the fact is that marketing is no more single now, it has got married with technology. Though both marketing and technology have their own personal lives, but they also do many things together as a couple.
Let's have a look at a few factors that show powerful collaboration of marketing and technology as a couple.
1. Technology helps marketers to keep brands' promises: Major focus of marketers is to build and manage brand. Brand is all about keeping promises to meet customers' expectations. Now a days, customers are having real-time conversations with businesses through technology channels such as websites and mobile apps. For example, if due to technical reasons, a customer is not able to book a taxi through UBER or is not able to make payment through Paytm then he would have a bad experience with the brand.
2. Technology facilitates reach, relevance and rate: Digital has transformed rate (speed), relevance and reach of marketing campaigns. Targeted messages can be sent to targeted audience in real time leading to impact on buying decisions of customers. For example, if a customer is looking for baby food or specific fashion then he would search for it on Google and Google search gives relevant results through SEO and SEM. These results help customers to make the right decision and companies to get leads.
3. Technology helps in making informed decisions: To make right decisions for the upcoming campaigns, marketing department needs information on customer complaints, transactions, production, inventory, sales figures as per past promotions, information on returns, acceptance rate of new product etc. IoT devices, social media channels, offline stores, third party data, internal functions etc. generate a lot of information about customers' needs, preferences and intent. Information systems can connect suppliers, partners, functions, channels together and assign responsibilities as per market changes. Analytics on this data help in providing insights on how customer relations, conversion rates, engagement, life time value, RoI etc. could be improved. For example, Under Armour, an American sports clothing and accessories company is using technology to deepen customer relationships by combining user-submitted data, third-party data, and industry research to create fully personalized training, health and nutrition content.
4. Technology helps in selling: Analytics and automation help marketers to segment their leads, cross-sell and up-sell without human intervention. For example, through analytics, ecommerce site like Amazon and Netflix are able to monitor customers' orders and identify patterns. This analyzed information automatically reaches out to customers by options such as what other similar items other customers have brought, top rated products, items recently viewed, featured recommendations and so on.
5. Technology helps in building relationships: Marketing department's goal is to build and nurture relationship between brands and customers and technology helps in enabling this goal with multiple customers at the same time. For example, Firstcry.com gives gift boxes to lakhs of new parents every year through hospitals. Packed boxes are delivered to thousands of hospitals on the basis of number of monthly baby births at these hospitals. FirstCry account managers collect parents' feedback forms, which are entered into database. Technology helps to analyze this data to evaluate customers' activity and conversion. Technology enables memorizing babies' birth dates and gives an ability to customize weekly emails for father & mother separately with information relevant as per babies' growth.
6. Technology helps in providing consistent experience: Brand is an experience that customers get while interacting with same business at various locations. Goli Vada Pav is India's largest vada pav chain with around 350 stores in 21 states. Goli has been able to provide consistent experience of Mumbai's vada pav to its customers in various states because it has a strong backend of technology to develop vadas in a fully automated plant, track them through technology and get fried in automated fryers with limited human intervention. Because of technology, Goli Vada Pav has been able to manage challenges related to chef dependency, wastage, quality, taste etc. and scale up its business.
7. Technology enables continuous communication: Technology helps businesses to respond to millions of customers for billions of queries in real time. For example, technology in the backend of Google Search helps Google to meet expectations of its users by continuously answering to their billions of queries. Google search engine's quick and relevant responses have played a major role in building the relationship between Google brand and its customers. Similarly, FedEx helps its millions of customers in tracking their packages through its website 24 by 7.
8. Technology spreads brands' awareness: A strong idea can quickly gain huge scale and spread brands' awareness through social media channels such as Facebook, YouTube, blogs etc. For example, TED as a brand is globally known for spreading great ideas on many scientific, cultural, and academic topics through internet. Another example, The Viral Fever (TVF) as a brand is known for covering topics such as Indian politics, movies, lifestyle, social concepts, etc. and deliver them to large number of audience through internet.
9. Technology improves customer loyalty: Brands can gain loyalty from customers by providing best in class services. Service is not a one-time activity, it is a continuous process of providing the right information and comfort to customers at the right time. Many Starbucks stores have high-tech Clover coffee machines, which connect to the cloud to communicate the performance of the machines and to track customer preferences. The Clover uses precise technology and a calculated algorithm to brew coffee within its ideal temperature and produce the ideal flavor. Starbucks is also working on smart refrigerators that track the expiration dates of milk and other items inside. Starbucks is also providing completely free Wi-Fi and premium content through Starbucks Digital Network.
10. Technology helps in customisation: In today's scenario, every customer wants to be treated little special and customers are demanding differentiation in products and services. For example, Coca-Cola's freestyle dispensers allow customers to create their own beverage by choosing from over 100 drinks in various combinations. This technology allows a greater variety of drinks, dispenser records information concerning consumers' drink choices and then sends the data back to Coca-Cola as market research.
As world is becoming more competitive and choices for customers are increasing, it is becoming important for businesses to become adaptable, listen continuously, learn, make changes dynamically and respond quickly. To meet these requirements, both marketing and technology would need to keep on enhancing their capabilities and keep on strengthening their partnership.
Guest Author
The author is a Marketer & Author. He is an alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur
