Lenzing Group

Society today is going through a radical shift from the physical world to the digital sphere. Companies will need to adapt to the ever-changing customer journey in order to thrive in the new economy, or be left behind.

We know that a new habit takes 21 days to form and up to two months to solidify. Thus, imagine what two years would do on consumers’ spending habits.  Especially when looking at how the pandemic has changed everyone’s consumer behaviour during these years. Brick and mortar stores shutting down their physical presence at a record rate, while online-only businesses such as Amazon have reached new heights. This shows the complete transformation, a true “digital transformation”, of the consumer journey enabled by the pandemic.

A solidified habit is also hard to break. Therefore, companies can’t wait for the pandemic to be over and go back to their old ways of conducting business.They’d need to digitally transform their business in order to match the shift in consumer demand.

One of the most important aspects for companies to prepare for the world opening up is a good Omni-channel Digital Marketing strategy. The first touch point of a business to the consumers in the new era would be through a variety of digital channels.  The traditional ways of marketing simply don’t work anymore. Companies would need to reinvent their marketing strategy to involve multiple digital touch points through Omni-channel marketing to grab their audiences’ attention. Consumers today use at least 2-3 digital channels daily. Ranging from the typical laptop and smartphone, to smartwatch and virtual assistance like Alexa and more. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that more than 70 percent of consumers use multiple digital channels while shopping, and they channel-hop across two channels or more when they shop for an item online. This shows the importance of a refined Digital Marketing strategy that involves Omni-channel planning for companies to tackle the new age consumer behaviour.

"Not only can MarTech help with reaching target audiences, but it can also enhance business operational processes and improve customer satisfaction."

Digital Marketing can be managed efficiently with proper marketing technologies, or MarTech, in place. Not only can MarTech help with reaching target audiences, but it can also enhance business operational processes and improve customer satisfaction. Here are some of the most important types of MarTech for a company in its marketing digital transformation:

Marketing automation tools –

Platform/service that replaces manual repetitive marketing processes with automated execution and management. One example is that it automates marketing efforts such as customer data segmentation/integration, automated personalized messages, and direct emails. This will provide your customers a unique personalized experience while you acquire the leads in automatically segmented categories in the system. It also allows you to evaluate customers’ data much more efficiently and facilitate sales and marketing efforts. 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools –

Widely used (or integrated) with marketing automation tools, CRM tools help sales and marketers manage customer database across different channels. It translates customers’ data from all different teams ranging from customer service, marketers, sales, social media, and more into useful business intelligence. This provides detailed information on the customers’ history and preferences, enabling company representatives to ensure their customers’ needs are met completely and improve customer satisfaction.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools –

We all know how important SEO is to any website, but what is the best practice of SEO aside from good UX and UI? Content. Good, original content. Google updates its algorithm constantly to ensure the best and most relevant search results are presented to the audiences. Keywords/phrases still matter, but in a way that they should be integrated naturally within the content itself with the right frequency and proximity between them. However, don’t just focus on how Google reads your website, focus on your audiences, as audience interactions within your site also determines how your website will perform in search engines. SEO tools will help marketers determine the best combinations of these in order to generate the best organic ranking websites.

Analytic tools –

How did your online ads perform? Which is getting the most ROI and which isn’t? What should be improved in the next campaign? All these aren’t possible to find out without good analytic tools. The tools provide marketers with the detailed breakdown of their ad campaign’s performance, which they can use to improve the ROI by evaluating each ad’s effectiveness towards targeted demographics and modify them for optimal performance through A/B testing. Studying the post-campaign statistics and applying new ideas will ensure each new ad campaign will generate higher audience reception for maximized ROI.

Content Management System (CMS) –

By allowing users to have direct control on managing all content on the websites, users can streamline all content management processes and apply content strategies efficiently. With the importance of content generation and relevancy to a website’s SEO, complete control of the websites is a must for any content marketers. It also allows users to install third-party plugins to enhance the functionalities of the websites, improving the websites’ overall user interface and user experience, ultimately enhancing the overall customer journey.

Social Media Management tools -

With the importance of human-to-human interactions today between brands and their target audiences, social media has become a crucial element in any digital marketer's marketing strategy. Social media management tools allow users to manage all their social media accounts into one platform, which is critical for monitoring e-reputation across all channels and assigning customers' social inquiries to relevant departments. The content calendar function ensures content consistency from all users across the globe as they co-share updates with each other. Only a business' internal marketers would truly know their brand's DNA, so a business' social media management being done in-house would be the most effective.

There are more sophisticated types of MarTech which can provide companies with advanced business intelligence for further improvements on operational processes. However, the above MarTech tools are the necessity for any company to integrate within their business in order to match today’s new age consumer behaviour for a true marketing Digital Transformation.