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The year 2019 will be marked in history as a breakthrough year for Digital Marketing, especially in the United States. For the first time, digital ad spending will surpass traditional expenditure. According to eMarketer’s forecast, total digital ad spending in the US will grow by 19%, reaching US$ 129.34 billion in 2019. This accounts for 54.2% of estimated total US ad spending. By 2023, digital is predicted to exceed two-thirds of total media spending. Not surprisingly, mobile alone will be responsible for almost 67% of digital ad spend (US$87.06 billion).
This shift is remarkable and much desirable, as it demonstrates that brands are in sync with digital-native consumers. But the bigger question is, ‘Is it enough to succeed in today’s digital era?’
The answer is a resounding ‘no’.
This shift is part of a larger revolution of which companies across the spectrum need to be cognizant. Organizations that lead this change will have the coveted competitive edge, and those who don’t join the bandwagon will be left behind. In 2017, only 60 companies that were on the 1955 Fortune 500 list were still around. That’s fewer than 12%. The other 88% either went bankrupt, got acquired, or are no longer in the list.
The origin of this evolution is Digital Transformation (DX).
Dissecting the DX difference
DX cannot happen overnight and it needs to be built into an enterprise DNA. It requires rebuilding and remodeling of organizational technology, processes, infrastructures and culture.
To succeed in the new world, it is vital to comprehend what exactly has changed from the traditional to the new digital world.The answer is simple – the power center has transferred from brands to consumers. Today, consumers control what they see, where they see and for how long they want to see it. Therefore, brands – big or small, need to realign their digital strategy, cognizant of the fact that consumers are in command, not them.
Why your business needs DX
According to a research by Forrester – Enhancing customer experiences is a top strategic priority for Business. This ties perfectly into DX as its key drivers are customer satisfaction, improved time-to-market and profitability, according to the research.
Along with enhancing customer acquisition, retention and overall experience, DX can future-proof an organization by simplifying processes and operations, providing business insights at fingertips, developing automation via Internet of Things (IoT), leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities resulting in faster development of products and services.
Four realms to conquer
At Innover, we see the digital battleground divided into four realms: Experience, Engagement, Personalization and Insights. Brands need to conquer all four realms to compete, survive, win and rule. To make that happen, businesses need to align their business goals and objectives with customer expectations from that brand.
Experience is not restricted to how consumers interact with a brand’s own properties-digital or physical. It’s also about mapping the consumer journey and recognizing all potential touch points so a brand can unify the communication and experience that consumers are privy to, at every step.
Therefore, brands need to join all online and offline customer related data elements to get complete visibility into the path and the behavior of consumers
Engagement is one of the biggest challenges brands face today. With increasing distractions and diminishing attention spans, creating genuine engagement is the key to success. Brands need to build strong, robust and long-lasting relationships with the customer. Word of mouth, still rules the recommendation roost and It is imperative brands utilize bespoke tools to nurture and attend to the needs of each and every individual, so they become brand advocates.
Personalization helps to engage with a customer and excite them towards the brand.
It helps to continuously re-enforce brand commitment to the consumer and show who is really at the center of every business decision. Personalization depends on using various factors such as likes/dislikes, geography, time, browsing history, etc. to recommend relevant products to consumers to create the most optimum marketing campaign and ensure maximum sales conversions. Innover’s Personalization Framework can help brands create one-on-one contextual, relevant, and customized customer engagements, and enable them to join all the marketing dots to win over the elusive consumer.
Insights While the promise of Experience -> Engagement -> Personalization is very powerful, it will fail if you don’t have the right customer insights to adapt to changing needs and business dynamics. An insights engine helps to learn from the past, to course-correct for a better future and a happily ever after.
To gain these golden nuggets of insights, it is vital brands utilize next- gen technologies that collect the petabytes of data every organization has access to and use technologies powered by AI and ML to make sense of that data, and use it in real-time to drive business-critical decisions.
While all this may seem overwhelming and chaotic, the good thing is that technology has brought in tremendous disruption to support brands with all the weapons they need to win in the digital battlefield. Adopting new-age technologies such as AI and ML and leveraging those to get deeper insights into consumer preferences, identify buying behavior, anticipate future needs, and target them in a hyper-personalized manner on the platform or social channel they prefer to frequent. This experiential marketing tailors content, creatives and delivery mode for each individual consumer and truly uplifts the customer experience.
If you need help strategizing and implementing your digital strategy, you can partner with us at Innover, and our DX ninjas can help add the right tools to your arsenal, providing unwavering support as you steer through a digitally transformed world.
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