Marketing in digital world

The digital world has far transformed from a fragmented piece of the monopolistic market to that of a diversely well organised sector. Commodities and services are becoming obsolete, where value is the key differentiator. An affinity towards technology has beguiled all sentients to engage with the reality via a digital platform. Technology is at its apex to deliver the customer a customised user experience, tailored to their preferences. We leave in an era where the learning curve is no more steady, it’s radically exponential in terms outburst innovation.

Marketing was there for decades. Whether offline or online the main objective is to increase the bottom line. Over time when a business grows with their clientele, they diversify, the verticals becomes broader, accompanying complexities. Complexities, when managed without accountability, can lead way chaos. One good example will be setting a target with meagre knowledge about the target market. Pressure on all verticals forcing employees to slowly slip away from the concept of “Customer’s” to that of “Sales”. When the change in ideology slowly creeps in and bemuse with a customer centric value driven strategy, it forces most marketers to make wrong decisions. One bad experience and the brand will see its ripples in the digital world, one great example will be the creative trolls.

Savvy millennials sensed the opportunity and have been rigorously trying to create a holistic approach to identify the trend and create strategies to cater the online market. In today’s world marketing strategies needs to be tailored to meet the niche markets attention. D-Commerce (digital commerce) has promised wide latitudes to explicitly explore and position the intangibles among consumers. In an omnipotent ecosystem, constructing multiple touch points and maintaining a consistent online presence is the key to digital success.

#1 Innovative entrepreneurship in a draconian world

Innovation drives the future. An entrepreneur who wades through challenges and creates a solution that actually adds value to the people, Thrives. The trends are shifting, as each day passes technology is additional an additional puzzle into the market, it is clearly noticed with the high volatility in terms of channel hopping. To meet the market demands an entrepreneur needs to innovate and re-innovate his strategies to scale up to the customer’s demands.

We need to acknowledge that innovation forces the market to bring quality products and services that could improve the end user’s quality of life. Creative products focused to offer multiple benefits can radically attract high market attention. Customers are not concerned about the features, they are more inclined to derive the benefit or the value for what they invest. So an entrepreneur needs to know the target customers and the niche market. An enterprises corporate sustainability could depend upon the level of integration and innovation the organization is willing to make.

Globalisation a has given us an open market. A five syllable word that compromised numerous niche segments (creating an ambiguous atmosphere). When comes to marketing an entrepreneur needs to know what kind of innovative strategy works best with individual niche markets. When running a business an entrepreneur needs to make himself available for product innovation, process innovation, and market innovation. Innovation marketing has played a significant role in the transition of conventional businesses to its modern outlook. Where a brand as a totality represents the entities business value.

L’oreal, The French cosmetic company was successful in implementing innovative marketing strategy. The cosmetic manufacturer has developed an App (L’oreal makeup genius) which helps people who are beauty conscious to work out a digital makeover. Giving them a digital experience to test the makeup that best suited their skin tone. To be noted; the digital enabled strategy was a huge success, around 7 million people had used the app.

#2 Smart technologies to stay ahead of the curve

Evolving and adapting to new technologies are essential to stay tuned with the market changes. Fiction based AI villains, who could make their own radical decisions are getting designed and being tested in real-time. Bots fueled with AGI, rigorously interacting with humans to accustom cognitive learning. Personalised bots making smart decisions for us. Yes, we are heading to a future where smart technology will supersede us.

I am pretty sure most of you have come across the word IoT (Internet of Things). In the near future itself, IoT will revolutionise the way we interact with the digital world. IoT is a network of interconnected systems/ electronic devices, which automatically exchanges data and information making it palpable to make informed decisions on its own.

Technologies play an impeccable role in market research and to interpret the customer behaviour. When understanding the customer becomes feasible, embellish personalization becomes the core to amplify online conversion. CRM technologies makes it possible to track and analyse information, creating focused metrics which enables a marketer to make informed decisions when detailing the buyer’s journey. With smart technologies as a business, the entity will be able to provide instant feedbacks to customer concerns.

Smart technologies help create a virtual simulation making it more appealing for entrepreneurs to identify any discrepancy at the earliest and detail the reasoning, giving the entity a competitive edge when compared to its counterparts.

#3  Be creative don’t be Emulative – Find your voice

The key trait that distinguishes you from others is your brand voice. Every piece of content that you develop, every interaction you make, all needs to consistently reflect the personality of your business entity.  Create around what your institution stands for. Not what your competitor says they are (don’t copy similar kinds). Consider there are 10 freelancers working on a project, with an objective of consistently creating content. Then the probability of a variation is comparatively high. Unless the content is moderated by an individual in the organization. Synchronizing it to the organization’s brand voice prior to publishing.

Your brand voice helps people to easily identify and recognize your presence. It also helps to reflect the uniqueness and position yourself as an authoritative entity in the target niche. One cannot emulate or pretend, lending a voice will question the institution’s confidence and creates incertitude among people.

Consider that you are creating a theme park. Then every activity you do needs to contribute to the brand voice. Let’s start with the logo. A logo needs to reciprocate the message that, Hey I believe the logo represents a themed park rather a commercial centre. The best way to do it is to design a roller coaster as a logo than stuff it with buildings (unless your create a figmentation to that of a fantasy world).

#4 Offline or online a customer centric lean strategy is the best

In a fierce startup ecosystem, every entrepreneur is on a run to effectively deploy the scant resources. When complexities extrude a lean strategy help provide clear direction and making it more palpable for novel ideas to permeate a reach the high verticals. In a resource constrained venture, the opportunity cost plays an dramatic role in determining the success factor. The entity needs to know that the customer needs and not to assume what they want. That way the resources can be effectively deployed. A lean marketing strategy help taper the risk of failure.

Understanding the customer is the key to success. As Eric Ries mentioned you need to know when your business strategy needs a pivot. Designing a product based on the customer needs help reduce the overheads. Create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), do a couple of market test and finalise based on what fits the market. Consider that you are creating an eCommerce website, then create a test project/ staging website and test it under a wide envelope. Collect the feedbacks and iterate the website based on it. When analysed, you will notice that every feedback you received through experimentation will help improve the eCommerce websites performance. The inputs will help create a final eCommerce website which improves the end user experience (UX). When UX part becomes simple and easy, your online traffic will slowly start to engage with the website. From a marketing perspective what more do you need, Higher the interaction more the people will find value in your website.

A customer centric lean approach helps a business organization to stay tuned with the market demands. The marketing cycle helps the business entity to understand the market competition and remain competitive. Consider that your competitor has released a new feature, instead of leaping, the lean strategy help you to make an informed decision. Whether the new feature is adding value to the market? Are the target customers looking for similar features? Should I invest in developing a new feature or improvise on an existing one? What gives me a better market benefit? etc.

#5 Value Vs Features

Let’s categorise selling into two, Selling by features and selling based on the benefits an end will get after consuming the product. A feature is often referred to the elements that accompany the product. Eg; a smartphone with multiple features. On the other hand, benefits are literally solutions that address the end customers concerns. When addressing the benefit, a business needs to reflect the sense of empathy and ask the question ”What is in it for me?”.

Features are something that the end user could brag about whereas benefit will answer their queries.

Parting Notes: A good share of people are using technologies to make buying decisions, and the trend seems to plot a steady graph. Digital spectrum helps a business entity to represent themselves among a wider (targeted) audience. Scattering their availability by creating multiple touch points for customers to interact and convert. For you to be successful in the digital era, you need to be prepared to accommodate changes and continuously add value to the user.