Digital transformation in marketing refers to using technology to continuously evolve all aspects of marketing to improve the customer experience. It’s the only way to future-proof your business. Brands need to use data to identify and understand the preferences of customers and provide personalised experiences, while making sure customer data is collected with the consent of the customer and without it getting compromised.
Brands need to continuously look for new ways to trigger, engage and nurture customers by going beyond traditional marketing methods. If you’re embarking on such a journey, here are the key areas for you to start:
Trends and Technologies Of Digital Transformation In Marketing
Customer Analytics
Making sure you have the platforms in place to collect, analyse and report data for decision-making is the biggest step. It’s no longer just using surveys to gather customer data but collecting and analysing customer data across an entire range of channels, devices, and interactions in an automated way.
Find out which channels drive the newest customers, what content customers are looking at when scrolling through your website, how well customers are interacting with your latest newsletters, and how well your latest campaign is performing based on a specific promo code.
Customer analytics give you the insight necessary to devise new strategies, products, and services that your customers will want to engage with.
One of the easiest places to start is using Google Analytics (GA). GA provides a great way to find key customer data points for your website and app. It’s also free of charge and very easy to implement. It provides you with information such as who is visiting your website, where they are coming from, and what they are looking at on your website. You can set up Google Search Console too. You can get reports on your website's health and possible bugs.
Other tools you can explore are Hotjar, helps optimising the conversion on your website, which , which keeps track of your brand mentions online, and Tableau, for data visualisation and reporting.
Data Management Platforms (DMP’s)
DMP’s, or data platforms, exist so you can collect, store and manage data coming from multiple sources such as analytics tools, social media, websites, etc., It compiles the data in a comprehensive and organised manner. Data platforms also allow you to enforce better privacy systems.
Customer data platforms gain their information from both third and first-party cookies. First-Party cookies are when you directly gain information from a customer who visited your website. Third-party is when another website sends you data of their customer. Google is phasing out the use of third-party cookies by 2024 and replacing it with an alternative ‘Google Topics’ solution.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO has been around for many years and rankings pretty much determine how easy it is for people to find your website through a simple online keyword search. Key trends are the use of AI and voice search, which are going to grow in adoption among users. You will have to start planning your SEO strategies with this development in mind to stay ahead.
With voice search, people tend to not use standard short or long tail queries but instead ask questions using more complete sentences. This means your website content will need to be optimised to answer such questions.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation tools allow you to automate specific marketing processes or functions. Many organisations are already using such tools to improve marketing management, automated content, or using chatbots. The current trend is to create more tailored and personalised content that increases the customer experience. Examples are to provide more customised website content depending on the user’s profile and interests or automatically send more personalised funnel-optimised content.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Brands have begun enhancing the customer experience by letting customers try out products virtually. This includes providing experiences where it feels like a product is actually in your room through the lens of your phone camera.
Final Thoughts
Starting a digital transformation in marketing initially requires an assessment of your current marketing tools and channels. From there, it’s important to have an in-depth understanding of available technologies and perform an assessment of what’s required and most suitable for your organisation based on your needs and objectives. If you don’t have the skillsets in-house, you may want to explore bringing in experts in the form of marketing consultants or a fractional CMO to help you manage through such complex transformation process.