Businesses must offer far more than traditional marketing techniques if they are serious about growth and strategy, according to Comms Vision speaker Allister Frost, founder and Managing Consultant at Wild Orange Media.
If marketing messages are to remain relevant to their target audiences they must extend their influence to the 'segment of one', he told delegates, and this can only be achieved by alleviating historic divisions between marketing and IT departments. "IT needs to understand marketing and see it as an enabler for growth," he stated. "The marketing versus IT divide cannot continue. Data is key to making marketing messages hyper-relevant. This is your big opportunity."
Frost, who has spent 25 years working in big organisations such as Microsoft, now gives a helping hand to companies wanting to evolve in line with how technology is fuelling the customer experience. "It's commonly said that we live in a Digital World where screens are cheap and offer a window into wider realities," he added. But it's not a Digital World, it's Our World and there's no reverse gear. We are irreversibly changed and hyper-informed with more access to information sources than ever before. We become welded to the technology we trust."
Hyper-connected consumers are no longer the underdog. They have to an extent disempowered businesses by taking control of 'knowledge'. And customers are intolerable to sub-standard service.
"This all means that businesses must improve," added Frost. "Organisations must learn to play the long game, create new marketing messages and build relationships that can be nurtured. Prospects must not be rushed, they should be given information on their terms - helping is the new selling."
The language of marketing is no longer a language of action and hoped-for reaction. It's interactions that count most and this dynamic has driven an evolution in content marketing. And there is a clear danger in hyping blanket messages that should sensibly be more targeted and individualised.
"Marketing is no longer a case of 'spray and pray' to see what sticks," noted Frost. "It should be laser targeted to reach specific people in a short space of time. Marketing is now about talking to an increasingly smaller group of people, and saying the right things to the right people at the right time."
This tech-fuelled reaction to customers should encourage all channel marketers to think differently. "As technology and automation moves us forward, the 'segment of one' has emerged," added Frost. "Personally tailored messages will be key."