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The SA Leader Magazine

Digital September 2015 Cover

In the September issue

How to recruit through Social Media


Uber yourself before you get Kodaked


POPI and Medical Practices


Leading and staying focus


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Marketing Articles

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Less energy, more power: introducing the socially conscious…

Less energy, more power: introducing the socially conscious consumer

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Rethink your role as a marketer and fast!

The growing complexity of the marketing role places a huge burden on marketing leaders. Quinton Pienaar, CEO of Agilitude, a Salesforce reseller in Africa, and a customer experience evangelist, says that it is very clear that the marketing role will continue to grow in complexity within the next two years.

 

“A Forrester study, commissioned by Salesforce, entitled ‘The New Calculus Of Marketing’, says that marketers today have more channels to choose from than ever before. Thanks to increasing device proliferation, the Internet of Things, and the digitisation of offline channels, the choices for marketers will become even more numerous, making the role and its responsibilities all the more complex,” explains Pienaar.

 

Forrester predicts that within the next two years, big data will finally be put to good use as marketers stop waiting for insights to reveal themselves and start finding actionable paths through the information. “Using big data, marketers will start to develop smarter, more relevant programmes across their mix by incorporating data-driven insights into their planning, and then using the new robust data they get out of those programmes to inform their future plans.”

 

But, Pienaar says that there is work to be done as marketing executives figure out how to equip themselves in facing these new challenges. The study revealed that digital marketing technologies are a seemingly endless source of innovation for marketers: “In recent years, marketers have gained access to real-time engagement, predictive analytics and behaviourally triggered automation, which has made a significant difference to their marketing decisions and plans.”

 

Yet, he says that many marketers still continue to use an acquisition marketing approach: targeting large-scale, demographically defined audience segments, defined by publishers and evaluated by the reach and frequency of impressions.

 

By considering digital technology, an organisation is able to build relationships directly with individual customers. This practice enables brands to target and respond to individual customers or prospects — anonymous or known — with personalised content and offers.

 

“We are in the age of the customer; only customer-obsessed companies can survive the disruption caused by empowered customers. Marketing leaders, who are on the frontlines of this disruption, will need to pull money away from traditional areas of investment, such as brand advertising, and invest in creating real-time data intelligence and contextual customer experiences,” says Pienaar.

 

He says that this type of transformation requires marketing leaders to rethink their roles, responsibilities, and priorities as they prepare to steer their organisations toward customer obsession.

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