Category: Strategy

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Strategy

Clueless Dad vs Suburban Sophie: Distinctions between Stereotype and Customer Persona

customer persona stereotype

Does a customer persona stereotype consumers?

With customer personas becoming a cornerstone of customer-centric marketing, it is crucial to distinguish between stereotypes and customer personas.

Both concepts involve grouping individuals. They serve different purposes and are constructed through vastly different processes. Look at these examples.

Customer Persona: Suburban Sophie

Suburban Sophie is a customer persona created by a home goods retailer. Stephanie is a 38-year-old married woman with two children. The family lives in the suburbs. She works part-time as a school administrator and is actively involved in her local community. Stephanie values product quality and durability and is willing to pay a premium for goods that promise longevity. She prefers shopping online for convenience but enjoys visiting stores for a tactile experience. Her purchasing decisions are influenced by product reviews and recommendations from her social circle.

Customer persona of a suburban resident

This persona was developed through data analysis, including purchase history, customer surveys, and social media engagement. ‘Suburban Sophie’ helps the retailer tailor its marketing campaigns, product selection, and customer service to meet this market segment’s needs.

Stereotype: The Clueless Dad

On the other hand, ‘The Clueless Dad’ is a consumer stereotype often seen in advertising. This stereotype portrays fathers as bumbling and inept regarding domestic tasks and parenting. They are depicted as needing the help of a spouse or a product to navigate household challenges successfully. This stereotype is not based on data or research but on outdated societal norms and media tropes.

The ‘The Clueless Dad’ stereotype can be harmful as it reinforces gender biases and diminishes the role of fathers in family life. It also fails to acknowledge the diversity of modern fatherhood and the competence of many men in managing their homes and children.

Distinctions between Customer Personas and Stereotypes

‘Suburban Sophie’ is a data-driven, detailed archetype that serves as a tool for the retailer to understand and cater to a specific customer group. It is dynamic and can be updated as new data becomes available, ensuring the persona remains relevant and useful. In contrast, the ‘Clueless Dad’ is a static and oversimplified representation that relies on generalizations rather than facts. It does not provide actionable insights for marketers and can alienate some of the audience due to its inaccuracy and insensitivity.

Stereotypes: Oversimplified and Inflexible

Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about a group of people that are often based on limited or no real data. They are inflexible constructs that do not change even when presented with new information. Stereotypes can be harmful as they lead to discriminatory attitudes and behaviours, reducing individuals to a single, often inaccurate characteristic. For example, common stereotypes might include believing that older people are not tech-savvy or that millennials are entitled.

Customer Personas: Data-Driven and Dynamic

In contrast, customer personas are detailed, research-based profiles representing segments of a business’s target audience. Their creations require using demographic, psychographic, and behavioural data collected from actual customers. Personas are dynamic and are regularly updated to reflect the evolving nature of the customer base. For instance, a customer persona for a digital marketing tool might be ‘Entrepreneur Emma,’ a persona based on data from young business owners who are tech-savvy and value efficiency.

The Creation Process: Research vs. Assumption

The creation of stereotypes often stems from societal assumptions and lacks a factual basis. Media, cultural narratives, and social reinforcement have perpetuated them without a thorough understanding of the individuals within the stereotyped group.

On the other hand, customer personas result from meticulous research, including surveys, interviews, and customer behaviour analysis. This process ensures that personas are grounded in reality and provides actionable insights for businesses. They help companies understand customer needs, preferences, and pain points, enabling them to tailor their products and marketing strategies effectively.

Application: Harmful vs. Beneficial

Stereotypes can lead to discrimination and exclusion, affecting individuals’ opportunities and quality of life. They often justify biased practices and can harm societal cohesion and progress.

Conversely, customer personas enhance customer experiences and service delivery. They allow businesses to personalize their approach, ensuring that marketing efforts are relevant and resonate with the audience. Personas help create products, services, and content that meet the specific needs of different customer groups, fostering inclusion and customer satisfaction.

Embracing Complexity vs. Simplifying Diversity

The critical difference between stereotypes and customer personas is their human complexity approach. Stereotypes simplify and ignore the rich diversity of individual experiences, while customer personas embrace this complexity, seeking to understand and cater to it.

For marketers, recognising and avoiding stereotypes while thoughtfully creating and utilising customer personas can lead to more successful and respectful engagement with their audience.

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Strategy

How to Develop a Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy that Delivers Results?

customer-centric marketing strategy

Developing a customer-centric marketing strategy requires a mindset and strategies to achieve the intended results.

Marketing is shifting towards a customer-centric approach has become more than just a trend—it’s a necessity for businesses aiming to thrive in a competitive environment.

What is a Customer-Centric Marketing Mindset?

Customer-centric marketing is all about understanding and responding to customers’ needs and behaviours. A customer-centric mindset means prioritising the customer’s needs and experiences at every level of the organisation, from strategy to operations. It’s about shifting the focus from product-centric to customer-centric, ensuring that every decision made is in the customer’s best interest.

There were misunderstandings that the customer-centrism is the job description of the customer service staff.

However, this mindset is not solely the responsibility of the customer service department; it requires involvement and commitment across all departments.

Sharing customer insights across the organization ensures everyone is aligned with the customer-centric vision. When colleagues from different departments understand the customers’ perspectives, they can collaborate more effectively to deliver solutions that meet and exceed customer expectations.

Customer-Centric Marketing Examples

Starbucks: Personalizing Customer Experience
Starbucks’ Rewards Loyalty Program is a prime example of customer-centric marketing. By offering personalised rewards, mobile ordering, and free birthday treats, Starbucks caters to individual customer preferences, encouraging repeat business and enhancing customer satisfaction.

STL Ocarina: Addressing Niche Interests
STL Ocarina’s marketing strategy focuses on its customers’ passion for The Legend of Zelda series. By making it easy to find themed ocarinas and providing instructional resources, it addresses the specific wants and needs of its target audience, creating a memorable and tailored shopping experience.

Actions Recommended for a Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy

  1. Deep Customer Understanding
    Gather insights into your customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviours. Use qualitative and quantitative research methods, such as interviews, focus groups, surveys, and social media analysis, to build a comprehensive customer profile.
  2. Personalised Engagement
    Tailor your marketing messages and offers to customers based on their unique characteristics and preferences. Utilize data analytics to segment your audience and deliver relevant content that resonates with each group.
  3. Value-Added Interactions
    Ensure that every touchpoint with your customers adds value to their experience. This could be through exceptional customer service, informative content, or interactive experiences that engage the customer and make them feel valued.
  4. Continuous Improvement
    Adopt a feedback loop where you regularly collect customer feedback, measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and iterate based on the insights gained. This will help you refine your strategy and ensure it remains aligned with customer expectations.
  5. Leadership Involvement
    Involve your company’s leadership in the customer-centric approach. Their commitment can help drive a culture that prioritises customer needs across all departments and functions.

Implementing a customer-centric marketing strategy requires a shift in the mindset from product-focused to customer-focused.

Adopting a customer-centric approach is an investment in companies’ future successes. Your Clicademist recommends you start today and watch the customer relationships—and your business—flourish.

By following these actionable recommendations and learning from successful examples, marketers can develop a marketing strategy that not only meets but exceeds customer expectations, leading to increased loyalty and business growth.

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Strategy

What are the most effective tools for digital marketing?

Digital marketing tools

Choosing top digital marketing tools depends on the area of marketing you’re active in. In theory, digital tools should be able to boost your performance and help you focus on the creative side of things, instead of performing manual tasks endlessly.

I’ve tested out a few digital marketing tools and eventually picked my top five:

Social media tool: Kontentino

Kontentino. Mostly because it has some additional features that are extremely useful to me when managing social media, such as client-friendly approvals (within the app, without the need to exchange countless emails), not to mention the intuitive calendar that lets the whole team handle all profiles across social networks from one place. It really makes a difference if you manage a lot of accounts.

Link tool: RockerLink

RocketLink.There’s no social media marketing and content promotion without shortened links. RocketLink definitely proves to be a great solution for this purpose – it doesn’t only let you shorten URLs but also customize them by adding many elements to them, like chat boxes. Speaking of…

Conversational marketing tool: Live chat by LiveAgent

Live chat by LiveAgent. Somehow, conversational marketing is still not leveraged by many marketers out there. I find LiveAgent’s live chat very intuitive to use and make good use of, which I definitely recommend.

Programs manage tool: Post Affiliate Pro

Post Affiliate Pro. If you rather dig into affiliate marketing, it doesn’t get easier than with Post Affiliate Pro. It has a truly intuitive dashboard for both merchants and affiliates, which makes the programs easy to manage.

Files manage tool: Filecamp

Filecamp. It makes storing, managing and sharing all my files and visuals easily, no matter their size. This way, I can keep all my assets well-organized and find whatever I’m looking for in an instant.

That’s my toolbox in a nutshell. Still, when choosing yours, think of your needs first before you start giving some tools a try. Only then you can truly establish what works best for you and make an informed choice in the end.

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Strategy

Customer Persona vs Market Segmentation: Which strategy suits your business?

market segmentation vs customer persona

Businesses strive to change consumers to become customers. In today’s marketing, two key concepts often come into play: customer persona and market segmentation. Both are crucial for businesses to understand and target their market effectively, yet they serve different purposes and offer unique insights into the customer base.

Customer Persona vs. Market Segmentation

A customer persona is essentially a detailed profile of an ideal customer based on market research and real data about existing customers. It goes beyond basic demographics to include psychographics, such as attitudes, aspirations, and behavioural traits. A persona is a semi-fictional character that embodies the characteristics of a company’s ideal customer, helping marketers visualise and understand the motivations, desires, and challenges faced by their target audience.

On the other hand, market segmentation divides a customer base into groups based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, geography, behaviour, and psychographics. Segmentation allows businesses to categorize their customers into distinct groups with common needs or preferences, enabling more targeted and effective marketing strategies.

The main difference between the customer persona and market segmentation lies in their focus and application. While customer personas provide a deep, narrative-driven understanding of an individual customer type, market segmentation identifies and categorises broader groups within the market. However, these two strategies are not mutually exclusive; they can complement each other. Segmentation can help identify the different groups within a market, and personas can then be developed to represent the needs and behaviours of each segment.

Customer persona vs market segmentation – Who should choose which?

Businesses and marketers must assess their unique needs and market dynamics to determine how to choose or integrate these two strategies for their marketing efforts.

Businesses that benefit most from customer personas require a deep understanding of individual customer experiences to tailor their products, services, or marketing messages. These include companies in highly competitive markets where personalised marketing is crucial, such as e-commerce, software as a service (SaaS), and content creation platforms.

Marketers who rely on market segmentation strategies want to scale their strategies across diverse customer bases. This approach benefits businesses with a wide range of products or services that appeal to different demographics or companies operating in varied geographic locations. Market segmentation is vital for large retailers, multinational corporations, and organizations to allocate marketing resources efficiently across different customer groups.

While customer personas and market segmentation are distinct concepts, they are interrelated and both essential to a comprehensive marketing strategy. Customer personas allow for a nuanced understanding of the customer’s world, while market segmentation provides a structured approach to categorizing the customer base. By doing so, they can create more resonant and effective marketing campaigns that truly speak to their customers’ needs and desires.

Customer Persona Case: “Tech-savvy Steve”

Your Clicademist provides a detailed illustration of how to use customer personas below. We will post about how-tos for market segmentation separately.

customer persona vs market segmentation

Background:
Steve is a 30-year-old software engineer living in a metropolitan city. He holds a Master’s in Computer Science and works for a leading tech company. Steve is single, enjoys a good work-life balance, and has a disposable income that he likes to spend on the latest tech gadgets.

Demographics:

  • Age: 30
  • Gender: Male
  • Marital Status: Single
  • Location: Urban city
  • Occupation: Software Engineer
  • Education: Master’s in Computer Science
  • Income: $95,000 per year

Psychographics:

  • Values efficiency and productivity
  • Enjoys staying up-to-date with the latest technology trends
  • Prefers quality over quantity
  • Seeks gadgets that improve his daily life and work performance
  • Willing to pay a premium for innovative features

Goals:

  • To streamline his daily tasks both professionally and personally
  • To maintain a competitive edge in his career by leveraging new technologies
  • To invest in smart home devices that offer convenience and security

Challenges:

  • Finding reliable sources of information for unbiased tech product reviews
  • Balancing the desire for the latest tech with the need for practicality and budgeting
  • Integrating new devices seamlessly with his existing ecosystem

Media Consumption:

  • Follows tech blogs and podcasts
  • Active on professional networking sites like LinkedIn
  • Uses tech forums to stay informed and contribute to discussions

Purchasing Behavior:

  • Conducts thorough research before making a purchase
  • Prefers online shopping for its convenience and variety
  • Influenced by expert reviews and peer recommendations

Preferred Marketing Channels:

  • Email newsletters from trusted tech news sources
  • Targeted ads on social media platforms
  • Webinars and online events featuring new tech launches

How Can Marketers Engage?

Steve is looking to upgrade his smartwatch. He starts by reading articles on the latest models, comparing specs, and checking user reviews. He values a watch that can seamlessly sync with his other devices, has a long battery life, and includes health-tracking features. After narrowing down his options, he looks for the best deals online, checks for additional warranties, and makes his purchase.

To attract customers like Steve, marketers should focus on providing detailed and technical content that highlights the innovative aspects of their products. They should engage with him through professional channels and offer in-depth information that aids his research process. Additionally, providing a seamless online shopping experience with clear comparisons and easy review access will resonate with Steve’s purchasing habits.

This customer persona example illustrates how businesses can create a detailed profile to understand better and target their ideal customers. By knowing “Tech-Savvy Steve,” a company can tailor its marketing strategies to meet his specific needs and preferences, ultimately leading to a more effective and personalised marketing approach.

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Strategy

Customer Persona: The cornerstone of customer-centric marketing

customer persona for customer-centric marketing
Customer persona is the corner stone of customer-centric marketing

A customer persona is pivotal for marketers to understand and connect with their target audience. It is the first piece of the building blocks of customer-centric marketing practice. If a business aims to maximise customer lifetime values (CLV), start with the customer persona.

What is a customer persona?

It is an archetypal representation of a subset of the customer base, embodying similar goals, needs, expectations, behaviours, and motivation factors.

Here are two examples.

Persona 1: Budgeting Beth – Financial App User
A financial management app company creates a user persona named “Budgeting Beth.” Beth is a 30-year-old accountant living in an urban life. She is tech-savvy and always looking for efficient ways to manage personal finances. She represents the App’s ideal user – one who values financial planning and seeks tools to help achieve her monetary goals.

Persona 2: Networking Nick – Sales Leads Generator Persona
A professional networking platform developed a salesforce persona named “Networking Nick.” Nick is a 40-year-old entrepreneur who is too busy to attend networking events but is eager to connect with other professionals to grow his business. His goal is to generate sales leads with maximum time efficiency.

These personas are not mere guesses or assumptions about customer characteristics; they are crafted through a structured process involving detailed market research using qualitative and quantitative methods.

Nor is a customer persona to stereotype consumers. Its creation is based on data collected via diligent research.

How to create a customer persona?

Creating personas is a strategic approach that allows businesses to understand better and cater to their target audience. The personas are crafted using insights from customer interviews, social media analysis, and behavioural data from the platform.

The creation process involves analysing data from current users, conducting surveys, and holding focus groups to understand the typical characteristics of the most engaged users.

In Budgeting Beth’s case, the resulting persona helps the App company tailor its marketing and product features to include more personalised App options and investment tracking, which resonated well with Beth’s profile. Marketing campaigns are also designed with messaging that speaks directly to Beth’s needs, resulting in higher engagement rates.

Customer personas serve as a valuable resource for gaining insight into the market and formulating strategies that resonate with the target audience. They extend beyond basic demographic information to include interests, needs, and pain points, enabling marketers to tailor messages and design a seamless customer journey.

How can customer-centric marketers use customer personas?

Marketers can use customer personas to identify specific needs and pain points for different customer segments, tailoring marketing strategies more effectively and enhancing customer engagement through personalised experiences, in the following steps.

  1. Define Target Audience: Begin by defining who your ideal customers are. This involves identifying the customer types that interact with your brand and understanding their unique characteristics.
  2. Gather Data and Insights: Conduct market research to collect data on your target audience. Use empathy maps and surveys designed for personas to gather rich, insightful data that will inform your persona creation.
  3. Create Detailed Customer Profiles: Develop comprehensive profiles for each persona, detailing their preferences, behaviours, motivations, and challenges. This will serve as the foundation for your customer-centric strategies.
  4. Personalise Communication: Use customer persona insights to personalize your marketing messages and communication across channels. This personalisation can lead to more effective marketing campaigns and increased conversion rates.
  5. Optimise Customer Journeys: Apply the knowledge of customer personas to optimize the customer journey at every touchpoint. Ensure that each stage of the journey is designed to meet the expectations and needs of the persona it represents.
  6. Measure and Adapt: Continuously measure the success of your customer-centric strategies and be willing to adapt. Use customer feedback and performance data to refine your personas and journey maps for better alignment with customer expectations.

Customer personas are indispensable tools in customer-centric marketing. They enable businesses to empathise with their customers, tailor their marketing efforts, and ultimately provide a positive purchasing experience that fosters loyalty and growth. By diligently applying customer personas to the marketing process, companies can achieve a deeper connection with their audience and drive business success.

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Strategy

Consumer Touchpoints: Some Are More Essential than Others

Digital consumer touchpoints

Businesses battle to enhance customer lifetime value (CLV), which represents the total worth of a customer to a company over the entirety of their relationship. The key to maximizing CLV lies in effectively leveraging consumer touchpoints.

An old-time brick-and-mortar merchant relies on the shopfront as the primary consumer touchpoint. The CLV hinged on whether or how often customers would revisit.

Consumer touchpoints shopfront

Digital marketing technology has created a plethora of new virtual consumer touchpoints. They span the various stages of interaction between a customer and a brand, and they play a pivotal role in shaping the customer’s perception and experience.

Your Clicademists have followed the evolution of digital consumer touchpoints. We suggest that whereas everyone is essential, some are more so than others.

The more essential digital consumer touchpoints

One of the most impactful touchpoints is digital engagement, including transactions and fulfilment, facilitated by e-commerce channels. As highlighted by McKinsey, digital engagement provides companies with valuable data on consumer behaviour, which can be used to optimise marketing and product development. The importance of these touchpoints has induced Amazon Prime and numerous delivery services. For instance, Delivery Hero, an online food delivery service from Germany, has made CLV their core steering metric. It focuses on understanding customers intimately and engaging them with tailored offers to their context and needs.

Another significant touchpoint is social media, a leading digital platform for consumer interaction. According to Matomo Analytics, social media and video-sharing platforms are crucial for promoting customer loyalty and improving brand reputation. Forbes Advisor released a 2023 survey indicating that social media apps have become a popular medium for purchases among users aged 18 to 44, underscoring these platforms’ importance in the customer journey’s pre-purchase stage.

Moreover, Forbes Advisor suggests that customer-incentivising touchpoints can effectively increase CLV. Offering perks such as free shipping or freebies for reaching a specific order amount encourages additional spending and enhances the overall customer experience. Various SaaS businesses have successfully employed this strategy, which offers temporary upgrades or trials to entice customers.

While some touchpoints may significantly shape the customer experience and brand perception, others play a subtler role in the customer journey.

The Lesser but Not the Least Digital Touchpoints

In the intricate web of consumer touchpoints, not all interactions hold the same weight in influencing customer lifetime value (CLV). Understanding these lesser touchpoints is crucial for businesses aiming to streamline their efforts and allocate resources effectively.

Lesser touchpoints often involve passive or post-purchase interactions, which may not directly contribute to immediate sales but still impact overall customer satisfaction and retention. For example, product catalogues provide information, but they are often less influential than the active engagement of a sales call or a well-crafted digital advertisement. Moreover, a customer reading a thank-you letter after a purchase might appreciate the gesture, but it is unlikely to be a decisive factor in their purchasing decision. Similarly, while

Another touchpoint considered less critical is the customer portal for checking order status. While it is an essential service feature, it does not actively engage the customer in a way that enhances CLV unless it is part of a broader, more interactive customer service strategy. Self-service options such as knowledge bases and product how-tos also fall into this category. They are important for customer empowerment and satisfaction but are not typically decisive in the initial stages of the customer journey.

Moreover, indirect interactions such as word-of-mouth and reviews, while they can have a significant impact on brand perception, are less controllable by the company and thus may be seen as less critical touchpoints to manage directly. These interactions are mediated by consumer-controlled offline or online channels and can vary widely in their influence.

It is important to note that while these touchpoints may be less important in driving immediate sales, they contribute to the overall customer experience and can indirectly influence future purchasing decisions and loyalty. Therefore, while businesses might prioritize more impactful touchpoints, they should not neglect these subtler interactions.

Actionable Recommendation: Mapping Customer Journeys

Identifying and optimizing these touchpoints requires a deep understanding of the customer journey. Qualtrics Experience Management recommends integrating records to create a comprehensive customer journey map, measuring revenue at each touchpoint, and adding it together over the customer’s lifetime. By doing so, businesses can pinpoint where the customer creates the most value and tailor their strategies accordingly.

Businesses should focus on optimising essential touchpoints that directly contribute to customer acquisition and retention while maintaining a holistic view of the customer journey. By understanding and managing the less critical touchpoints, companies can ensure a cohesive and satisfying customer experience that supports long-term CLV growth. Optimising these touchpoints requires an approach that balances resource allocation with the potential impact on the customer experience.

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Strategy Web3

The Metaverse: the Fifth Digital Marketing Avenue

metaverse digital marketing

The metaverse is more than Hololens and Vision Pro. It is a new avenue for brands to engage with their audiences.

Since the end of 2021, the metaverse has garnered immense interest and investments. The selling point is a convergence of the physical and digital worlds, offering a new realm of possibilities for marketers.

metaverse digital marketing

The Four Pillars of Digital Marketing

Before delving into the metaverse, it’s crucial to understand the four traditional pillars of digital marketing:

  1. Web: The foundation of digital presence, websites are the digital storefronts where content is king.
  2. Social Media: Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have transformed how brands interact with their customers, offering a space for real-time engagement and community building.
  3. Email: Despite being one of the oldest online communication methods, email marketing remains a powerful tool for personalised messaging and direct outreach.
  4. Mobile: With smartphone ubiquity, mobile marketing has become essential, encompassing everything from mobile-optimized content to app-based marketing.

The Rise of the Metaverse as the Fifth with Web3 DNA

The metaverse comes as the 5th digital marketing avenue. It enables a burgeoning ecosystem where immersive experiences redefine user interaction. It is an “always-on” environment that transcends geographical boundaries, allowing brands to create unique, engaging experiences that blend reality with virtuality.

The metaverse and Web3 are closely intertwined. Web3 represents a decentralised internet powered by blockchain technology. These concepts intersect through NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and smart contracts, enabling unique digital ownership within the metaverse. Web3’s focus on ownership aligns with the metaverse’s vision of user sovereignty, allowing seamless transfer of assets across platforms. Challenges include scalability and governance, but Web3 solutions, which your Clicademist explains in other posts.

metaverse marketing
People playing as avatars in a virtual reality metaverse shop. Metaverse marketing promotes fashion retail concepts and sports gamification.

Exploring Successful Metaverse Marketing Campaigns

Let’s delve into some of the most successful metaverse marketing campaigns that have set the bar high for creativity and effectiveness.

Nike’s NIKELAND on Roblox: Nike ventured into the metaverse with the launch of NIKELAND on Roblox, an interactive world inspired by the brand’s headquarters. This digital space allows users to play mini-games, customize avatars with Nike gear, and engage in a community centred around sports and play. The initiative not only increased engagement with the brand but also showcased Nike’s commitment to innovation and community building.

Wendy’s Food Fight in Fortnite: Wendy’s cleverly used Fortnite’s Food Fight game mode to promote its “fresh, never frozen beef” policy. By creating a character on a mission to destroy frozen beef and streaming the gameplay on Twitch, Wendy’s garnered over 250,000 live views, winning multiple influencer awards and significantly boosting its brand awareness in the metaverse.

Samsung’s Metaverse Store in Decentraland: Samsung embraced the metaverse by launching its first virtual store in Decentraland. This bold move allowed the tech giant to connect with consumers novelly, offering an immersive brand experience that leverages the unique capabilities of the metaverse environment.

For marketers looking to explore the potential of the metaverse, these examples serve as a blueprint for crafting campaigns that are not only innovative but also align with the brand’s identity and values.

Insights into Metaverse Marketing

The metaverse offers a canvas for brands to express their creativity and connect with consumers unprecedentedly.

  • Immersive Brand Experiences: The metaverse allows brands to create rich, interactive worlds that offer unparalleled engagement opportunities. From virtual showrooms to interactive product demos, the possibilities are endless.
  • Community and Co-Creation: Brands can foster a sense of community by involving consumers in the creation process, leading to stronger brand loyalty and advocacy.
  • Data and Personalisation: The metaverse provides a wealth of data, enabling hyper-personalised experiences tailored to individual preferences and behaviours.

As the metaverse grows, it will undoubtedly become an integral part of the digital marketing mix.

The Significance

The metaverse is not just the fifth avenue of digital marketing. It represents a significant shift in digital marketing, akin to the advent of social media or mobile marketing.

It’s a space where creativity meets technology, and brands can build more profound, meaningful connections with their audiences. Embracing this new avenue will be essential for marketers aiming to thrive in a digital-first world.

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Strategy

Is Marketing Today All Digital?

McDonald's traditional and digital marketing
McDonald's is an example of combining traditional marketing with digital business.

It’s not entirely fair or accurate to say that all marketing today is digital marketing, although it has undoubtedly become a dominant force.

In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, the rise of digital strategies has transformed the way businesses connect with their audience. Yet, despite the undeniable surge in digital marketing’s popularity, traditional marketing methods continue to hold significant value in a comprehensive marketing plan.

The Enduring Value of Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing, encompassing print ads, television and radio commercials, billboards, and direct mail, has a longstanding history of effectiveness. One of the most iconic examples is McDonald’s using traditional marketing channels via TV, billboards, and in-store promotions, including tray mats and Happy Meals, to generate footfalls in its massive network of restaurants. This traditional marketing strategy not only boosted sales but also created a personal connection with consumers. This does not mean the world’s No.1 fast-food franchise is not digitalising its marketing, we will talk about that separately.

Another example is the memorable ZooZoo characters created by Vodafone for their TV commercials in India. These ads were not only successful in capturing attention but also became a cultural phenomenon, demonstrating the power of creativity in traditional marketing channels.

Digital Marketing’s Exponential Growth

Digital marketing has seen explosive growth with the advent of the Internet, social media, and mobile devices. It offers precise targeting, real-time analytics, and often lower costs. A notable case study is the American Kennel Club’s content strategy, which increased online traffic by 30%, attracting both new and seasoned dog lovers and resulting in significant content value.

Another success story is Orange France’s campaign utilized AI deepfake technology to superimpose men’s faces onto the bodies of the French women’s soccer team, challenging unconscious bias and sexism in sports. This campaign not only went viral but also highlighted the potential of digital marketing to address social issues and engage with audiences on a deeper level.

Combining Strengths for Maximum Impact

The key to a successful marketing strategy is balancing digital and traditional methods. For instance, Google, a tech giant, still utilizes traditional marketing through billboards and print media to reinforce its brand presence. This blend of approaches allows businesses to leverage the broad reach of traditional media and the targeted precision of digital channels.

Synergising traditional and digital marketing

The debate between digital and traditional marketing is not about choosing one over the other but understanding how each can complement the other to create a robust marketing strategy. By integrating the strengths of both, businesses can craft campaigns that are not only innovative and engaging but also reach a diverse audience across multiple touchpoints.

While digital marketing continues to grow and innovate, traditional marketing remains a vital component of the marketing mix. The future of marketing will likely see an even greater integration of these strategies, working in tandem to achieve the ultimate goal of connecting with consumers in meaningful ways. The evolution of marketing is not a story of replacement but one of adaptation and synergy.

For more insights into effective marketing strategies and real-world examples, explore our resources on traditional and digital marketing approaches.

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Strategy

Top 10 Essential Digital Marketing Skills in 2024 & Where to Learn Them

Digital marketing essential skills in 2024

The year 2024 has ushered in new challenges and opportunities, making it imperative for marketing professionals to stay ahead of the curve. Here, we delve into the top 10 marketing skills crucial for success in this dynamic industry.

1. Data Analytics: The ability to interpret and leverage data is paramount. Marketers must possess the skill to analyze customer data and market trends to make informed decisions. Learning with Google Analytics is an excellent first step to data insights. Also try Clicademy, an innovative platform that opens its internal data analytics dashboard for registered users.

2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): These technologies revolutionise marketing automation, enabling personalised customer experiences and more efficient campaign management. Resources for learning include AI and machine learning modules on platforms like Coursera and edX.

3. Video Marketing: TikTok, a dominator as well as a disruptor in this field, is unstoppable. With the increasing consumption of video content, marketers must be adept at creating and optimising videos for various platforms. Resources include video production courses on websites like Udemy and Skillshare.

4. Influencer Marketing: Building relationships with influencers is a powerful way to reach target audiences and drive engagement. You can learn more through case studies and influencer marketing courses online.

5. Content Marketing: Crafting compelling content that resonates with audiences is more important than ever. It’s about telling a brand’s story in a way that adds value to the consumer experience. Resources for learning include content marketing courses on HubSpot Academy.

6. Social Media and Search Engine PPC Advertising: Understanding the nuances of advertising on platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram is essential for targeted campaigns and maximizing ROI.

7. Email Marketing: Despite being one of the oldest digital marketing channels, email marketing remains highly effective, especially when personalized and well-segmented. YourPrimer offers a beginner-friendly email marketing course.

8. E-commerce & Social commerce: With online shopping booming, understanding e-commerce is essential. Resources include e-commerce courses on platforms like Shopify Academy and BigCommerce University.

9. Graphic Design: Visual content is more important than ever. Resources include graphic design courses on Adobe Creative Cloud tutorials and Canva’s Design School.

10. SEO and SEM: Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing are key for increasing online visibility and driving organic and paid traffic to websites. You can learn these skills through SEO specialization courses on Coursera.

However, the landscape of digital marketing is constantly shifting, and what’s relevant today may evolve tomorrow. Stay informed, stay agile, and keep your skills sharp to thrive in the exciting world of marketing in 2024 and beyond.

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Strategy

Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends: What’s New and What Endures in 2024

Influencer digital marketing

In the 2024 digital marketing landscape, AI is everything and everywhere. Yet that is just a partial view. Technology and consumer behavioural shifts have elevated digital marketing’s dynamism to a new height. Your Clicademist brings you the top ten digital marketing trends to look out for in 2024. They are mostly the trends that have endured, however, with new directions emerging. 

1 Short-Form Video Content Reigns Supreme

Short-form video content continues to dominate the digital space, with platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts leading the charge. The bite-sized format caters to consumers’ dwindling attention spans and provides a creative outlet for brands to express their values and connect with audiences on a more personal level. For instance, a 2022 survey report by Statista revealed that 56% of U.S. consumers bought something based on an ad seen on TikTok.

2 AI and Automation: The New Norm

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation have become integral to digital marketing strategies. From chatbots providing customer service to AI-driven content creation, these technologies enhance efficiency and personalisation. Marketers leverage AI to analyse data, predict trends, and make informed decisions.

3 The Rise of Personalization

Personalisation is not just a trend; it’s an expectation. Consumers demand experiences tailored to their preferences; marketers use data analytics to deliver just that. AI algorithms can analyse consumer behaviour to deliver more targeted content. Therefore, personalised email campaigns, product recommendations, and content effectively engage customers. A prime example is Spotify’s Discover Weekly, which uses AI to curate personalised playlists for its users.

4 Privacy-First Marketing and Cookieless Future

With growing concerns over data privacy, marketers are adopting privacy-first strategies. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature is a significant move that has impacted how marketers collect data.

What is to look out for next? The digital marketing world is moving towards a cookieless future. Marketers are exploring alternative tracking methods that respect user privacy while providing valuable insights. This shift is prompting a re-evaluation of strategies around data collection and ad targeting.

5 Digital Marketing in the Metaverse

The Metaverse is opening up new avenues for digital marketing. Brands such as Nike and Samsung are creating immersive experiences that allow consumers to interact with products and services in virtual environments. This trend is still in its infancy but holds immense potential for the future of customer engagement.

Believing in future virtual worlds where people interact, work, and play, companies like Facebook (now Meta) are investing heavily in metaverse development. Thankfully, the metaverse is growing.

6 SEO Shifts to UX

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains a cornerstone of digital marketing. With the advent of voice search and AI, SEO strategies are evolving. Marketers are focusing on creating high-quality, relevant content that aligns with user intent and leveraging AI to optimize for the ever-changing search algorithms.

Google’s focus on user experience in its ranking algorithm means SEO is now more about providing value to users than just optimising for keywords. The introduction of Core Web Vitals is a testament to this shift. These trends highlight the dynamic nature of digital marketing and the importance of staying up-to-date with the latest developments.

One trend to note is the rise of voice search. With the rise of smart speakers and voice assistants, voice search optimisation has become crucial. Brands like Domino’s Pizza have leveraged this by enabling customers to order pizza through voice commands via Alexa.

7 Social Commerce Expansion

The integration of commerce and social media platforms has transformed how consumers shop. Social commerce simplifies the buying process by allowing users to purchase products directly through social media.

Social media platforms are becoming shopping destinations. Instagram’s Checkout feature allows users to purchase products without leaving the app, streamlining the shopping experience. TikTok Shop disrupts this area and adds to its dynamism. This trend is streamlining the customer journey and opening up new opportunities for brands to drive sales.

8 Influencer Marketing Going Big Yet Micro

Influencer marketing is still a crucial element of digital marketing. Collaborating with influencers who align with a brand’s values can significantly amplify reach and credibility. As consumers seek authenticity, influencers provide a trusted voice that can sway purchasing decisions.

Influencer marketing is shifting towards a focus on micro-influencers and authenticity. Brands like Glossier have thrived by partnering with micro-influencers who genuinely love and use their products.

9. Sustainability in Marketing

   Consumers are increasingly drawn to brands that demonstrate a commitment to sustainability. Patagonia’s marketing strategy, which emphasizes the company’s environmental efforts, has resonated strongly with eco-conscious consumers.

10. Content is Still the King

Content that aligns with a brand’s core values is critical to customer retention. Ben & Jerry’s activism and advocacy are well-reflected in their content, strengthening their brand identity.

Interactive content such as quizzes, polls, and augmented reality (AR) experiences are engaging users in new ways. IKEA’s AR app, which lets users visualize furniture in their homes before purchasing, is a notable case study.

Conclusion

The digital marketing landscape of 2024 is characterized by the adoption of new technologies, a focus on personalization, and a shift towards privacy-conscious practices. To succeed, marketers must remain agile, continuously learning and adapting to these trends. By embracing innovation and prioritizing the customer experience, brands can navigate this complex landscape and emerge victorious.

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Strategy

How smart, connected products are transforming Elon Musk net worth?

Tesla and Elon Musk net worth
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Driven by Tesla, Elon Musk net worth have been a super hot search query. Since a year ago on March 18 2020, Tesla share price has gone up from $71 by 10 folds, making him once the world’s richest man.

Tesla cars exemplify the Internet of Things technology. But how this piece of smart, connected product can generate such an unrivalled fortune? The marketing theorists of competitions and competitive advantages have given the answers.

Thus spoke Porter and Heppelmann

Michael Porter and James Heppelmann wrote in 2014 in Harvard Business Review that the technologies such as IoT have revolutionised old types of products composed solely of mechanical and electrical parts to become complex systems that combine hardware, sensors, data storage, microprocessors, software, and connectivity.

They used a farmer’s tractor 🚜 in the original version of the infographic adapted below to show the revolution process. The “complex systems” reside in Stage 4.

Smart, connected electric cars using IoT technology drive the auto industry into new boundaries of competitions.

Replacing the tractor with an electric car, we can see that a smart, connected car forms a product system involving at least, but not limited to, manufactured deliverables, energy and maintenance services, plus data and connectivity capabilities.

But neither the Porter & Heppelmann’s tractor nor an electric car would stop at Stage 4. These complex product systems will cruise into Stage 5 – the “system of systems”.

A Tesla car in the near future will be a product system in a larger transportation system. This Transport System must also have a sustaining network of, for example, the GeoData, Energy Supply, and Communications systems.

The automobile industry today is in Stage 4. But stock buyers invest in the future. The rising Elon Musk net worth indicates investor votes of confidence in Stage 5 when Tesla would take an upper hand in competitions.

Change of heart

The two authors also suggest that smart, connected products not only change the competitions within industries. They also redefine industry boundaries in which the competitive dynamics are completely different.

Take another look at the infographic. In stages 1 to 4, the basis of competition shifts from discrete products to product systems.

In Stage 5, the systems of systems link an array of product systems together. Tesla will find itself competing in the broader driverless transportation industry.

Why would it have a competitive upper hand? That’s because automobiles will have a change of hearts to work their brains.

In the stages when auto companies competed on the product level, the internal combustion engines were the heart of cars. Carmakers spent tens of millions to design viable engines to be planted in different models and product lines.

Electric car engines are not that expensive to design and less difficult to build. In electric cars, batteries are the heart. More importantly, for self-driving electric cars in the era of the automated transportation system of systems, data processing and connectivity capabilities will be the brains.

The big tech companies like Tesla are more competent in building the hearts and brains of the new auto industry. They leave the traditional auto brands chasing their taillights from far behind.

American cars great again?

The smart, connected electric cars may rebuild the former glory of the American automobile industry because of the country’s power in the interlinked technology industry systems.

The American cars basked in the glories of the Ford Model T till the 1970s Oil Crisis. After that, global consumer preferences shifted to fuel efficiency. Japanese and German cars were the biggest winners of the shift, beating American peers badly.

But Elon Musk’s Tesla is leading the changes in the competitive landscape. It may eventually disrupt the world order of the auto industry because the smart, connected cars in the future run on the new battery hearts and the data-processing brains.

A new formation of American Big Techs, with Google and Apple in it, is joining the competition by becoming carmakers. They are set to make great American cars, knowing better how to programme the chips in them.

Elon Musk’s net worth today is because of the prospects of Tesla in the new global competitive landscape of tomorrow. It all started with cars becoming smart, connected. The magic of IoT.

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Strategy

This tells differences between digital and traditional marketing

marketing touchpoint
The uniqueness of digital marketing lies in the numerous new consumer touchpoints. (Source of this infographic is https://www.orderhive.com/digital-ecommerce-can-help-increase-sales)

Let’s call the marketing before social media and Web 2.0 “traditional” marketing. Afterwards, there is this new digital marketing. The differences between the two are obvious, but hard to tell because of two reasons.

Hard to tell the differences

There may be no difference at all, primarily because of the strong inclusive and dependent relationships between the two. Digital marketing is a component of traditional marketing. It still uses the same systems, process, and strategies. Digital marketers use traditional marketing methods, such as segmentation, targeting, and positioning, to enable their practices. The new digital capabilities have not yet demonstrated their power to disrupt this profession.

Another factor complicates the differentiation. Marketing is becoming digital. The traditional practices are moving towards technology and digital platforms. Today a marketer inevitably thinks of digital marketing to kick off any campaign planning. Consumers feel the existence of brands more via digital channels than by physical connections. If digital marketing is taking over the whole marketing, what is the point to tell the differences?

The touchpoints

Trying to differentiate digital and traditional marketing by examining their mutual relationships leads to nowhere. But looking at their relationships with consumers instantly provides a solution. The solution lies in the consumer touchpoints that both digital and traditional marketing have to work on.

The consumer touchpoint is a cornerstone concept for understanding digital marketing. Scott Brinker, who produces the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog argues that touchpoints make this new marketing different.

In short, consumer touchpoints are where consumers and brands make contact with each other. Both sides could and would initiate the contacts, but businesses are generally more proactive.

There used to be mostly physical touchpoints. The traditional marketing mastered the skills to create and manage them. Stores and shops are prominent examples of such. McDonald’s restaurants counted customer footfalls as their most important performance indicators. But in the digital age, they have many more to number.

A picture is worth a thousand words

A search for “consumer touchpoints” online always lead to the featured image of above in various versions. This one is from Orderhive. It showcases the consumer touchpoints along the five-step buying process. Above the buying process bar in the centre of the picture are the touchpoints that digital marketing manages. Below the bar are the traditional yet still essential physical touchpoints.

This image shows the fundamental difference between digital and traditional marketing. That is the digital technology has created numerous new touchpoints for brands to engage with consumers.

Digital touchpoints are significant firstly they outnumber the physical ones. In this infographic by ratio of 13:8. The proportion in the reality can be even more skewed as marketers are upgrading traditional physical touchpoints such as direct mail and call centres into digital types.

The second significance of the increased number of touchpoints is the extended customer journey with brands. For example, Clicademy recently added an email newsletter service as an additional touchpoint with our users. Such extensions provide more opportunities for customer engagements and consumer experience enhancement, provided that marketers do the right things.

The third and most important significance of having more touchpoints is the possibilities for greater customer lifetime value (CLV), which is the revenues a customer may contribute during the period of relationships with brands. Digital touchpoints such as websites all aim at becoming the conversion points to transform prospect consumers into paying customers.

Busier marketers

This differentiation of marketing by consumer touchpoints relates to all marketers because there is simply more work to do. The new touchpoints are compelling reasons for marketers to make critical decisions on each of them. In addition, they need to constantly consider making more difficult choices of whether to keep or upgrade the traditional ones. Closures of high street shop fronts are not only due to dire financial ramifications but the responses to consumer’s choices of and preferences to digital touchpoints.

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Strategy

To clear confusions about marketing technology, use this guide

marketing technology space
There are patterns in the puzzling marketing technology space. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Marketing technology can be confusing because there is too much. A marketer with a Swiss-based sports federation recently told your Clicademist that she had to learn to use Figma, Miro, and Notion in the past few weeks, thanks to her new agency’s preferences. She confessed being an Office 365 user, she had not heard of any of these productivity tools weeks before.

The famous Marketing Technology Landscape infographics at its 2020 edition, has been struggling to be more informative than intimidating. All people can see is an agglomeration of logos to represent 8,000 plus technologies.

The problems of marketing technology

The rapidly growing multitude is one of the problems. Categorising the technology items as in the diagram below helps. But deep diving in even the smallest group of 601 Management solutions would not be practical.

Martech Category Growth 2019-2020
Marketing technology solutions 2020 categorised by chiefmartec.com. Click here for source.

The bigger problem lies in the interconnections between the technologies that every marketer deals with daily. There are at least three levels of connections. On the macro level are the technologies that come into our world. Next are the technologies as products and services provided by various companies and the competitors. On the operational level are the marketing technologies.

Your Clicademist uses the infographic below to demonstrate these relationships. The two moons stand for the marketing technologies in question.

There are three levels of interconnected relationships between technologies in marketing.

But imagine a star system with 8,000 and growing number of moons? No infographic can draw this massive scale of interconnections. We need a simpler solution to understand the relationships better.

Impacts of technology in marketing

Thankfully, we found the solution from the academians. George Day of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in a 2018 writing listed several technological forces that transform marketing. Three of those are particularly useful to guide people through the marketing technology maize.

We found a pattern of the marketing technology landscape by focusing on the impacts and leaving aside the issue of multitude. Let us examine these three impacts.

First, new ways of understanding and connecting with customers

Technology expanded marketers’ connections with consumers and clients. Social media alone have enabled such connectivity on a massive scale. The connectivity in turn has enabled data exchange. The data result in analytics to generate customer insights. The Clicademy data dashboard is such a prototype example.

Technology has also created more marketing touchpoints for businesses to engage with customers. These touchpoints provide connections for marketers to use some of those 8,000 technological solutions to engage customers with advertising and promotion, content and experience, and social relationships.

Second, advances in decision tools

Data and management categories of the marketing technology solutions embody this type of impacts. Marketing managers have always relied on data to make choices and solve problems. The differences today are the amount of data, the process of analysis, and the growing reliance on data.

Marketers also increasingly rely on technology to make and implement decisions. Human beings delegate this responsibility to computers. Automation is set to further disrupt the marketing industry in the days to come.

Third, new capabilities and competitors

This type of impacts is most exciting. A few years ago nobody would imagine the Apple Inc. to challenge BMW and Mercedes in the business of driverless cars. The creator of Amazon is compet IMG against the creator of some electric cars in an outer space race.

Technology brings new products and services to change companies’ business scopes as well as how people work. The cloud computing technology has brought about the three new tools which the Swiss sports federation manager has to work with. Those productivity tools are also commercial SaaS products.

Seeing these three impacts guides us to understand the myriad of technology in marketing. The first two have resulted in the marketing technology stacks used by the practitioners. These martech stacks are only to keep growing with the unstoppable third impact.

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Strategy

Five things you must know about API in digital marketing

marketing analytics uses API as one of the enabling technologies
Photo by ThisIsEngineering on Pexels.com

Over the past few years, the API has become a common digital marketing term. But marketers do not seem to take ownership of it, leaving it exclusively in the IT rooms. This is not right.

There are five things that every digital marketer today needs to know about APIs. So that they can take a proactive approach to command and use APIs in digital marketing.

First, what does API do?

We live in a world today with connected computers. These computers run applications, just like your phone runs the Apps. API stands for the “application programming interface”. It is a set of programming codes to tell the Apps to exchange data with each other in a controlled manner.

A common analogy is to compare APIs to restaurant service as this MuleSoft video does. Another example is that hotel marketplaces such as the Booking.com uses APIs to enable room providers (hotels and individual BandB owners) to share inventory and pricing in real-time.

Marketers can see the APIs as software that automatically collects data from other companies’ databases provided that the other companies also use APIs to allow such data accesses. With mutual consents, companies use APIs to let their computers talk to each other and exchange digital data.

Second, APIs share crucial data in business ecosystems

Why do companies want to and need to share data? It is because companies nowadays need to build business ecosystems in which partnerships are vital. Data owners need to give limited data access to clients, suppliers, and agents, to name a few. For social organisations and governments, automation in legitimate data sharing with the public is an obligation.

APIs are mainly business-to-business data exchange programmes. They are functionalities written into digital applications, therefore, has an indirect relationship with consumers. Consumers never download and install an API. Rather, they use applications with APIs running behind the scene.

Partly because APIs do not face consumers directly and partly because they are computer codes, marketers have not assumed responsibilities for them. This needs to change. Today advertising managers reselling Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, MailChimp inventories must take a look at these platforms’ API development documentations to at least have an idea about the next point.

Third, what data are exchanged?

The short answer is all kinds of data. But two types are more relevant to marketing than others.

The first type is about the capabilities of the systems. For example, marketplace and advertising websites use APIs to manage transactions with advert agencies. Video hosting platforms allow developer APIs to detect the system and content specifications. YouTube provides API references and snippets for websites to embed videos and to track and control the playbacks.

YouTube embed and API reference
Video sharing sites like YouTube uses APIs for video embedding.

Another type is the performance data for analytics and consumer insights. Google and Bing analytics provides all developers with API accesses. Clicademy chooses to use Analytify to use the API access to create our site’s traffic dashboard with real-time Google Analytics data for registered members to view.

The scope of data access and exchange depends on the data owner’s need to build the business ecosystem. Data owners decide what and how much data to share. The data fetchers may have various level of bargaining power to request specific accesses.

Marketers must be aware that when it comes to accessing and sharing consumer data, ethics become a matter of concern.

Fourth, how should digital marketing staff take ownership of API?

Marketers do not have to be all capable. Coding APIs is an IT engineer’s job. Marketers should work with a team of software coders and involve themselves in deciding what data are needed and for what purposes.

It makes sense to advise marketers on how not to work with the IT developers. Please do not just ask them what are possible and available. This question is OK if you are asking them to help you choose between a Mac or Windows laptop. But when it comes to APIs, the answer will be a long list of technical possibilities, of which 90% are incomprehensible for laypersons. So your IT colleagues would respond to you with a more pointed question, “what do you need?” If you could not answer this question, a chicken-and-egg chase would start.

Marketers should command and use APIs as technological tools to assist decision making. They should ask for the API functionalities based on the need for insights and the decisions to make. If marketers are clear about their data needs, they are in the position to own the APIs created to serve those needs.

Fifth, how can you start to learn digital marketing API?

It would be difficult if you have never seen a digital marketing API in action. To use an API-enabled application would be the best way to learn the technology about its capabilities and results.

For this purpose, Clicademy recommends TAGS, which stands for a Twitter Archiving Google Sheet application created by Martin Hawksey, a learning technologist from Edinburg, Scotland.

TAGS uses Twitter API access to collect data from the social network and present the data in Google sheets. Digital marketing learners should try this application to get the first-hand experience of API-enabled social data collection and analysis.

Please register with Clicademy and subscribe our email newsletters to stay tuned for our future discussions on using TAGS as one of the first steps of learning digital analytics for marketing.

Categories
Strategy

How do marketers stay relevant to marketing today

crop men at table with laptop in campus
Photo by Armin Rimoldi on Pexels.com

Marketing professionals need to adapt to the New Marketing driven by data and technology. Else, they would risk losing their relevance to this profession. These words are not dramatics.

Let us reflect on what happens when we hear or talk about marketing today. Before long the narratives would run into words such as the Big Data, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, marketing automation, etc. Marketing practitioners today not only have to talk and hear about these phrases constantly, but also deal and work with them on daily basis.

What’s your strength?

Obviously, these concepts do not traditionally belong to marketing. It is a challenge for marketers to take ownership of them. Marketing professionals’ strength has been in creativity, communications, and strategy. They are less comfortable working with computer codes and statistics. Likewise, marketing students tend to be more interested in Adobe Creative Cloud than SPSS, R, Python, and GitHub. Some of them still do not think they would ever need to touch them.

In a field with the ideal division of labour, statisticians and software engineers should take up the number crunching and coding jobs. But what if the labour now is about numbers and coding? Look again at those marketing buzzwords. They all require data and coding skills.

Contested field

For marketers, marketing has become a contested field. The increasing adoption of and reliance on data and software skills see jobs going to statisticians, data analysts, and software coders and engineers. It does not mean that creative and communication skillsets are not essential. However, marketing job seekers have seen recruitment ads noting analytics as essential skills and software literacy as preferred ones.

Marketing today has become technology-driven. To fuel its engine, data and computing have joined creativity, communications and strategy to be the core career assets. For the marketers who are strong in the latter set of expertise, their working relationships with the number and code persons are mutual supplementary in general. But peer-to-peer competition is looming.

In this wave of the New Marketing (We do not call it digital marketing and there will be a post to explain why), marketers should consider any or all of the three suggested approaches to handle the working relationships with colleagues who possess data and coding skills: to work with them, to work like them, and to lead them.

Relevant learning

To achieve any of these, one needs to learn how data analysts and software engineers work. Such learning will build up data analytics and software project development knowledge and skills. They can benefit multiple aspects of marketing. For example, data-driven agile marketing management, consumer understanding using data analytics, AI-assisted customer journey optimisation, new product development, automated customer relationship management, to name a few.

Building such knowledge requires a journey but is feasible within a manageable period of time. Clicademy in its next few series of posts will introduce concepts, tools and approaches that for our site visitors to learn data analytics and the New Marketing practices.

Clicademy links learning with reality. The site provides live traffic data to provide you with the first-hand analytic insights. You will need to register a membership to access the data analytics.