Future of marketing - Delivering on the human experience through a tech-enabled approach

• Technology has been playing an increasingly important role in the evolution of marketing.
• A future of marketing driven by technology was always inevitable. However, the pandemic has disrupted consumer’s path to purchase as well as consumer behaviours in a manner that was never envisaged.
• Chandrashekhar Mantha, Partner, Media & Entertainment Lead-Risk Advisory, Deloitte India writes how brands and marketers need to step up and embrace technology to their advantage by adopting agile marketing techniques in the future.

The role of the future marketer today has transformed much beyond delivering effective marketing campaigns to include deeper understanding of the product ecosystem, consumer behavior and preferences.

Access to technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality as well as to richer consumer data including high-end analytical tools, is shaping the future of marketing. Technology plays a much wider and critical role now in effectively transitioning from an event-based marketing focus existing in the industry to the new-age ‘always on’ content driven marketing of the future.

All this, whilst keeping in mind the 'human' element alive in marketing to create an impact that matters.

The message and the medium
Marketers will be able to influence the wider product ecosystem to provide a more human experience to their target consumers by understanding them better.

Sales of edge AI chips may touch 650 million (US$2.2 Billion) in 2020. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based marketing techniques can enable a customized consumer experience by understanding buying patterns, preferences and needs of consumers.

Embracing technology enables interventions at every stage of the path to purchase and even aftersales to promote loyalty and advocacy through initiatives targeted to specific customer.

With this, marketers would be able to target multiple sub selves of their consumers to influence their decision-making. The art will be to avoid creating brand fatigue keeping in mind that consumers at large are now conscious about data protection.

Barring these, about 27% of the consumers, never consider how a company uses their data at the time of making purchasing decisions.

Similarly, brands need to build trust by avoiding misuse of personal data or intruding privacy. Collection of extensive customer related data is another area where technology plays a significant role.

Marketers will now have the opportunity to harness this through deep learning and data science to create messages that are well researched and backed with data.

Facial or voice analysis can provide richer feedback to enhance customer experience. Chat bot interactions will become more personalised and human like to enhance the customer experience.

Deeper insights on word associations and understanding their correlation will enable marketing functions to understand the brand perception. Such insights help to identify real concerns of the consumers as well as to understand the effectiveness of the communication with the consumers.

In the connected world, another aspect to focus is to understand the customer decision triggers and once again, technology solutions are a boon here. For e.g. 80% of the consumers would be willing to pay more if a brand raised its prices to be more environmentally and socially responsible. Leading brands have accordingly used such insights and devised their messaging strategy.

70% of the consumers prefer learning about a product through content versus Ads.

AI-driven personalised creatives, content and geo targeted promotional offers help shorten the decision-making cycle by creating a better brand recall from the zero moment of truth to the ultimate moment of truth. AR/ VR based Ad content will create a more immersive and near human experience for the consumers.

Enhanced customer segmentation and targeting made possible through the new-age technologies may enable the possibility of exploring programmatic advertisement placements even for television.

Measurement and monitoring
A tech-enabled approach will strengthen a marketer’s capability to influence the medium and the message in a differentiated manner. This apart, it also drive effectiveness of marketing efforts through better tools for measurement and monitoring.

Deep learning and Machine learning techniques will enable building predictive models on media planning and buying to optimize the planning and buying activities and enhance the ROIs on spends. It will also be easier to reduce wastages by identifying the peak points for marketing interventions more effectively. Another art of possibility is to monitor the ability of an advertisement to hold its audience and to measure ad performance effectiveness. Finally, once the consumer journey is automated and integrated across multiple channels, a more accurate sales attribution to marketing channels may be plausible.

Early arrival of the future
A future of marketing driven by technology was always inevitable, however the pandemic has disrupted consumer’s path to purchase as well as consumer behaviours in a manner that was never envisaged. However, the early arrival of the future has opened up opportunities for marketers to adapt, innovate and embrace technology in a way that is relevant to the digitally evolved consumer in the new normal.

While the dynamics of the marketing game evolves, brands now need to step up and embrace technology to their advantage by adopting agile marketing techniques in the future.

Leveraging technology by staying true to the core principles of human-centricity will help brands to create a consumer experience that truly matters, protects and builds their brand equity by establishing a long-term impact for the future.