Become a Post-Digital Marketer
What do you think about the saga of
Big Data, smartphone, IoT, Wearables , smart
and intelligent automated analysis and so on so …what will happen to the
human factor to all these intelligence.
Is that human will stand too small in-front
of these human made machine’s intelligence …… Don’t worry its nothing like
that.
We are here to discuss today “The
Human Factor in Digital World”. The human factor will play a large part
in the next evolution of marketing. Even as digital tools multiply and become
table stakes for operations, Post-digital marketing will rely
more than ever on humans and their intuition and curiosity to serve as a filter
and a balance to all the noise generated by social media , mobile and the
Internet of Things.
So is that I am saying even after being
digital you would remain reliant on humans, Yes that goes without saying.
Having worked in telecom industry can vouch more for this …. In telecom there
are too much data and so too much noise … but human factory plays vital role as
“Filter
& Focus” approach, with the same source of data an intelligent
marketer build awesome campaign basis his intuition and consumer insights.
But hey!! Don’t get me wrong, I am
not saying there is no impact of all these digital interventions in Marketer’s
life …. It is impacting already big way and without digital skills there is
no survival.
Subsequently, what’s coming out
here is Automation & Digitization are going to be the critical resources to
create and monitor marketing campaigns but human traits such as intuition,
curiosity and emotional intelligence are equally (in my mind more) important
resource will continue to be to ensure efficacy (soul) to the programs.
Having said this all now what I am here
to toss on the table for you is that now we must encourage to “Become
a Post-Digital Marketer” who assumes digital channels as the starting point
of most efforts and keep up with a demanding, fast-moving consumer consumers.
Now the question will come to your mind is
that “Isn’t everything digital?” yes it is. Things are moving fast in the digital space.
While eBay , Flipkart and amazon started in the digital space , it continually
adapts to the way consumers use the media, aiming for the moments that matter
to consumers.
And one example I can put here is
the “Only
App” decision taken by Flipkart basis a digital/machine analysis that
App is giving better ASP and Stickiness hence Website/WAP should be closed …
ignoring the fact that smartphone %age was 25% with 64% Data users and web was
one of the funnel for new customers which used to acquire and upgrade to APP,
now we all know what was the result.... So here the human touch was a big miss.
The growth in channels has brought
an explosion of data that marketers continue to grapple with. Dashboards and
other visualization tools have helped organize the reams of metrics, but they
don’t give them meaning, noted marketing insights, analytics, and operations….and
Top leadership needs a dashboard for my dashboards. In a popular way it’s
called like “One Pager” in telecom at least.
What I have experienced is that Metrics
can lose their value if they’re doing nothing but measure. We marketers need
less information and more insights from it. I have seen a data suffering from “Premature
extrapolation” ;) , Many times you experience
that you are being asked wrong
questions hence wrong and useless output full of irrelevant metrics. What I propose
is a “human-in-the-loop” approach to
analytics, which starts with a clear question and goal, so algorithms can clear
out the extraneous data and leave humans to study only the points relevant to
the business questions they wish to tackle.
By leveraging the ability to
produce those kinds of business results, marketers are in a prime position in
this environment where business has to manoeuvre quickly and face constant
disruptions. As the voice of that empowered digital consumer, Marketers are in
the right place to lead innovation in products and services that can be the
difference between profits or losses.
Now to deliver the desired output
Marketers will have to be immediate, personalized, and authentic to meet their standards,
process information faster and in different ways than previous demographics. Product
and technology life cycles are shrinking, and it’s almost impossible for us to
catch up if we miss a technology cycle.
“Most companies want to believe
they’re digital and they’re innovative, but they haven’t adopted a culture of
innovation,” Mendenhall said.
Some marketers have made an impact
because they understand how to transform a company and have been recognized for
their work, he said. Amazon India and airtel India I can vouch as for one I worked
for a decade and second my best buddies are working. J
Assuming the responsibilities for
business result and forming a partnership in areas that affect the direction of
the company’s growth, such as product development, adoption, stickiness and the
whole ROI for the respective campaigns.
“We are part of a shared
responsibility for product innovation in the company and we must not only
execute what the digital data tells us but what your human deployed on ground ,
meeting daily with the customers and encountering the competition and
constraints regularly .
What I see and experience is that, Consumers
are in a “hyper-adoption trend” where they try new products and services at a
pace never seen before and Marketers have to keep up and focus obsessively on
the customer; adapting the customer experience can bridge digital disruptions.
It’s a very interesting topic and
we can go on and on, hence I handover this here to you to take the thought
forward and build more richness with your passionate and engaged remarks to the importance of “Human Factor” J and “Become a Post-Digital Marketer”.
