Marketing is to satisfy consumers’ demand with some value in a sustainable and profitable manner. The businesses that understand what consumers need can enjoy strong growth. However, it is not easy to have an accurate understanding of consumers in the era of rapid changes in their behaviors. Apart from impressive products and services, businesses need to create new experiences for consumers and this is the reason why business organizations need “marketing transformation”.
It refers to the marketing that uses data as the basis for the development of the marketing models which stimulate business growth with data management ecosystems. Marketing transformation also unlocks the potential of the marketing automation and artificial intelligence (AI) that can meet the needs of customers perfectly and swiftly. Moreover, it reduces marketing costs and leads to the new business models which can create the incremental growth of businesses.
What is marketing transformation?
Marketing transformation is a complete marketing overhaul. Thinking processes, technologies and advanced data analytics are used to enhance the efficiency of marketing and create new business opportunities. Marketing transformation solves the following problems or pain points that many organizations are facing:
- Marketing environments have changed considerably and it is difficult to keep up with them.
- Although many organizations acknowledge changes in the business world, they have no idea where their own changes should begin.
- Organizations cannot forecast the far future of their business and are unable to set a goal of the digital transformation of their brands.
- A creative partner does not know what digital transformation is.
- A tech partner has neither knowledge nor understanding about marketing and business.
- Organizations fail to use data and technology to support marketing.
A checkup program before marketing transformation
Organizations have different degrees of readiness for the transformation. Some organizations are ready for immediate transformation but others will take times to do so. Bluebik has a four-level checkup program for organizations to find out where their marketing transformation should start.
1. Marketing Primitive Approach – This level suits the organizations that still adheres to mass marketing and have not divided consumers into groups (segmentation). They communicate mainly through mass media, use raw data from a third party such as a research company, and base business decisions mainly on their experiences.
2. Marketing Digitization Approach – It is the right choice for the organizations that reach customers through more channels but have not applied the personalized marketing which uses marketing data from online and offline channels. At this level, organizations start to store data at a central database but have not created a system for departments to withdraw data conveniently from the central database. However, this level shows a certain degree of data management.
3. Marketing Digitalization – At this level, organizations apply technology and data to support their marketing activities. The application includes the creation of personalized experiences and cross promotion to present products more precisely to target groups. They have their back office develop personalized cross-channels and use technologies to increase communication efficiency, offer good experiences to customers, cut management costs and save time. The technologies include chatbots, data analytic tools and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
4. Marketing Transformation – The level is the ultimate destination of many organizations. At this stage, organizations use the personalized omnichannels of marketing to exchange, analyze and acquire data. Netflix and Facebook, for example, provide customers with experiences through all online and offline channels and platforms seamlessly in real time. The provision of experiences through seamless marketing requires technologies. Automation and AI are applied to process and analyze behavioral data and findings will lead to the presentation of the exact products, services and experiences that consumers want as if the business organizations that reach this level of marketing approaches could read consumers’ mind.
Where are you on the road to marketing transformation?
1. Marketing digitization – This refers to the transformation of various types of data and storage such as physical hard copies and analog data into the digital data that are ready to use.
2. Marketing Digitalization – At this stage, digital and relevant technologies are used for marketing. They include marketing analytics tools. Besides, data are collected for use or readied for digital ecosystem development.
3. Marketing Transformation – Back-office and front-office marketing is integrated and based on customer centricity and the concept of “We Change Because They Changed, Not We Change Because We Want to Change”.
The awareness of present statuses is important to all kinds of changes. The organizations that know their current positions will be able to set correct directions for their move to the future and become the data-driven organizations that will have strengths to compete in the world of borderless business.
