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Key Moves to Improve Your Digital Marketing Fitness
Gartner for Marketing Leaders
© 2015 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
Invest in agility
Master measurement and analytics
View customers from the outside in
The key moves of digital marketing
Creating an exceptional customer experience is an imperative that involves every marketing discipline and channel. Which marketing actions will bring you the most opportunity in 2016?
Competition has heated up
Flip your orientation
Average organizations focus too much on what they’re selling and expose too much of their internal operations. When you focus on what’s at stake for your customer, you earn the right to their attention — and their business.
Democratize voice-of-customer insights to the right roles
Share insights wisely. One company used to wait 15 days to survey customers and another 15 to share the results internally and remediate. By compressing the cycle, they now close the loop without delay.
Close the feedback loop
Too often, companies react to customer feedback without systematically identifying and remediating root causes of issues and incidents. High-performing organizations use voice-of-customer data to close the loop both with customers and internally.
Build a unified view of the customer
Balance personalization and privacy with a master audience profile that includes every important piece of known data about the customer or prospect: demographic information, web and app activity, social behavior and more.
Take the long view in maximizing the value of customers
To compete effectively, look beyond individual transactions and focus on the entire customer journey. Start mapping tactical metrics to strategic goals that can have a positive impact on customer lifetime value (CLTV) to drive growth and profitability.
Move commerce experiences beyond your storefront
Innovative brands are moving beyond “site as store” and appealing to shoppers’ hearts and minds at crucial moments. Brands that identify and respond to these key moments of truth fastest and most accurately win.
Bridge the gap across buying channels
Consumers are browsing and buying more, from desktop to mobile to in-store. Identify areas where digital and offline commerce marketing can work together, include incentives for cross-channel collaboration and optimize marketing for the multichannel consumer.
Drive loyalty with concierge experiences
Mobile-savvy marketers leverage the smartphone to deliver added value and convenience to customers. Use the smartphone’s sensors — GPS radio for location, and cameras — to link customer profile information to specific triggers, such as location-based, outbound calls to action.
Personalize mobile experiences
Strategic marketers know that today’s consumers aren’t sticking with one mobile device: they use multiple devices regularly. Look at the smartphone as the new customer “hub” and start testing tactics to deliver more relevant experiences.
Deliver seamless multichannel experiences
Good conversation skills build trust. Innovate and invest in the right technologies to improve identification and mimic real-time conversation across devices and platforms while protecting your customers’ privacy.
Cultivate your customer community
In the age of social advertising, don’t lose the true value of social: the ability to converse one to one, build community and nurture relationships. The best community management programs benefit business, customers and influencers.
We’ve identified to cultivate this perspective:
Create seamless multichannel experiences
Move commerce experiences beyond the storefront
Develop a unified view of the customer
If you’re struggling to meet internal expectations that conflict with your customers’ needs, you’re not alone. Most organizations are used to focusing on what they sell. But today’s marketer needs to focus on what the customer needs.
Invest in world-class analytical skills
Analytics gets 34% share of marketing budgets today (vs. 21% in 2013). Create an analytics center of excellence (CoE) to build internal expertise and to coach and train other associates.
Make measurement a team sport
No man (or marketer) is an island. As you grow in responsibility and accountability, collaboration becomes essential. Own your outcomes, but cross the finish line and share the spotlight as a team.
Share social insights
Marketers say they increase ROI by sharing social data and insights with other areas of the organization. Make a point of ensuring that product development, customer experience and other business units have access to relevant social analytics.
Pivot from “batch and blast” to coordinated, event-triggered engagement
Event-triggered marketing increases the chance of a positive interaction by facilitating relevant “conversation” at the customer’s time of need. Use real-time or near-real-time data to help these moments become more predictive and practical.
Analyze market competition
Consumers are comparison shopping like never before, and brand loyalty has declined. Like a professional sports coach, model and analyze the competition, and anticipate what other players — competitors, partners, customers, influencers — will do in your model market.
To become truly you need to:
Pivot from “batch and blast” to coordinated, event-triggered engagements
Data-driven marketers establish KPIs of what good looks like, fine-tune customer experience, measure and, with maturity, optimize in near-real time.
Compete with agility and speed
Top marketing organizations adapt more quickly than their competitors. One retailer allows for flexible roles and responsibilities and faster sign-off processes. Project teams form, execute and disband in a matter of weeks or months — and the company remains more profitable than its rivals.
Get more value from agencies
Agency usage has outpaced traditional hiring. But marketers typically give their agencies tactical projects vs. tougher, strategic assignments. Treat agencies as strategic partners to get better results, sharper differentiation and increased ROI.
Create a virtual talent bench
Marketing needs are unpredictable. Hiring to peak demand can be pricey, and agencies can’t always handle your tactical needs on demand. The good news: Despite some complexities, the freelance (aka “gig”) economy is thriving. Hire as needed.
Build a content supply chain
Content drives every multichannel marketing effort — but our research shows that marketers invest far more in social marketers than in tools and processes. Investing in all three will enable your social marketing programs to scale.
Harness the power of dynamic creative
Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) appeared in display advertising a decade ago, but fell short of its promises. Despite some remaining issues, the potential reward is huge. Smart marketers employ sophisticated algorithms and agile creative to stay relevant.
Create an innovation lab
Centers of excellence in marketing and analytics are thriving — but innovation is difficult to cost-justify. You need tools and frameworks to build a case for investment. Elect team members to investigate emerging technologies and tactics regularly.
Tailor marketing to “environments”
The pressure is on to think outside the customer experience box. Innovative organizations use audio cues (streamed music), visual cues (facial or product recognition), even the status of vehicles in motion, to tailor marketing to a customer’s environment.
Explore the Internet of Things and digital business
From wearables to cars to consumer products, smart devices can deliver critical insights. But most marketers have yet to crack the code. Despite the complexities, it’s critical to evaluate new IoT data sources for their potential to drive profits.
These will help you:
You can’t see what’s ahead, but you can be prepared for continuous change. The opportunity to create advantage is often earned or lost in the moment — which is why you need to retool for both macro changes in markets and categories and micro changes in specific audience and customer interactions.
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Digital has redefined the role of marketing, adding new players and creating bigger complexities. Gartner for Marketing Leaders connects you with objective research and experts who will advise you in the digital marketing areas that matter most: social, mobile, multichannel and data-driven marketing, digital commerce, customer experience, marketing management, and emerging marketing technology & trends. Our clients say that they use our real-time, expert advice and objective research, data and tools to: • Target the right audiences • Choose the right channels • Quickly shortlist marketing and technology providers • Stay informed on market and competitors • Save time and avoid costly mistakes Gartner helps companies improve their business results through the use of technology. Our independent research and advice is trusted by business and technology leaders in approximately 10,000 distinct enterprises around the world. Visit gartner.com/digitalmarketing to learn more.
