Why Marketers Are Banking on Social and Mobile in 2015
Social and mobile make it easier for marketers to create real-time, personalized connections with consumers, so it's no wonder they're becoming the channels of choice.
Social and mobile make it easier for marketers to create real-time, personalized connections with consumers, so it's no wonder they're becoming the channels of choice.
What’s your job as a marketer? You’re a lot of things: a creative genius, a salesman, a spammer, and a visionary. But no matter how you operate, you are concerned with one thing at the core: the management of customer expectations and satisfaction. This basic tenet of marketing has gone largely unchanged. But as technology allows for a sublimation of the macro into micro – global campaigns that reach into the palm of your customers’ hands – your customers’ expectations shift. They expect brands to create real-time, one-to-one connections. Therefore it’s no surprise that social and mobile are brands’ chosen strategic marketing channels.
Your customers expect seamless interaction with your brand. You must travel with them across interfaces. Sixty-six percent of marketers say social media is central to their business. No longer is social media a job you toss to some intern. As social media grows in importance, it follows that strategy will be built around it. In this era of big data and analytics, marketers can identify the most popular social channel among consumers and confidently direct their campaigns, instead of misfiring and wasting resources.
Mobile devices are now the number-one place that people access digital media. Fifty-eight percent of marketers already have a team devoted to mobile marketing, and these brands have seen their marketing effectiveness significantly increase by integrating mobile across channels. Analytics show location-based marketing tactics are particularly effective. For example, in October of last year, American Eagle tried out Shopkick’s iBeacon in-store marketing program and found that more that twice the amount of Shopkick users used the dressing rooms when they received shopBeacon messages. And they were not alone – here are some other notable location-based mobile campaigns from 2014.
It boils down to this: Your job is navigating the intersection of your brand and your customers. While this has always been true, today you have more access to your customers than you have ever had, by a significant margin. You can know more about your customers’ tastes and preferences, friends and networks. As a marketer you are armed to the teeth. But the nature of these new channels – social and mobile – is constant evolution. Your challenge is keeping abreast of the ever-expanding innovations in order to most effectively utilize them.