The golden rule of marketing – “Know Your Customer”. The marketing campaigns, over the years have evolved based on this premise of the golden rule of marketing. First came product centric followed by consumer centric and now value centric across the above the line (ATL), below the line (BTL) and through the line (TTL) segments.
However, with evolution came in complexities of delivering experiences while also meeting the campaign objectives without letting down the returns on marketing spends. These complexities are sometimes a nightmare for the marketers.
It is pertinent to note that the marketing function in many enterprises has started diversifying from being solely driven by corporate marketing and channel mix to a complex organization which involves product thinking, automation and digitization. The one word that substitutes all the three is MarTech Platform. Will the MarTech platform impact the reach of the campaigns and the influence the buyer’s journey while also addressing the surrounding complexities? The answer is a resounding affirmative. The new age campaigns launched through a MarTech platform holds such promise of things that are bigger, more amplified, and certainly better.
Picture this buyers’ journey through the demand funnel: 
It is assumed that the prospects can be taken through a funnel in a linear fashion but the fact experienced by many successful marketers says it’s never ever linear. Each step in the funnel involves moving back and forth, weeding out the uninterested and engaging with the interested prospects and scoring them for their every interaction in the process. This scoring helps in moving the prospects through the funnel in a non-linear way to ready them as marketing qualified leads for sales acceptance and sales qualified leads for conversion.
Wondering what are the key elements that underlie the best in class MarTech platform of new age? Here are some of the prominent ones to take note –
- CRM integration: Marketing automation only targets the top of the funnel prospects and readies them in the journey through the funnel. Integrations with the brand’s CRM system that interfaces not just with marketing but sales and services creating a unified data platform converting warm leads into paying and repeat customers.
- Content play through cross channel: Leverage cross channels to engage with the prospects and feed them with hyper-personalized, contextually relevant content generated dynamically at the point of need for consumption. As per a study by Braze, when customers are reached through two or more channels, the levels of engagement rate were 166% higher than a single-channel rate and 642% higher than for customers who received no messages whatsoever. As prospects are continually connected through various channels like SMS, Email, Social media, Mobile apps, Push notifications, Websites, Ad displays, Chatbots, RCS so on and so forth, the per dollar return will be much higher when the required information reaches the prospect aligning with their behavior at the right point of time. Using the MarTech platform, the cross channel workflow could be configured for higher reach, engagement and conversion tracking.
- Lead management: According to a Forrester1, top performing brands convert 1.54% of marketing qualified leads to revenue. This means almost 98% people who start the customer journey are lost. The difference between make or break in successful lead management for customer acquisition is enriching customer experience. Behavioral lead scores help align the marketing and sales outreach efforts to provide best engagement experience to nurture, append missing data on leads and convert them to customers.
- AI and Predictive analytics: Data existing in silos are profiled to know your customer thoroughly. For example, telecom operators are sitting on customer data (MSISDN, services used, spending pattern), usage data (CDR, VAS, and average revenue), location data (frequented location, current location, location services used). On such big data system, apply Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning techniques, perform segmentation analysis and generate meaningful insights for the campaigns. Leverage the marketing transactions to present dashboards showing accelerating indications of Return of marketing investments
In summary, all said and done, brands are spending good chunk of their marketing budgets on technology but customers don’t only buy products or services but enjoy the experience that comes with it. Such digital experiences can be provided by adopting and deploying a good tech stack of MarTech platform aligning with the overall marketing strategy to deliver progressive campaigns. However, caution to be exercised before impulsively replacing existing platforms systems with new age MarTech platform as that will bring higher operational expenses than marketing efficiencies.
Source:
- Forrester US and Europe B2B Marketing Tactics and Benchmarks Online Survey
