Effective marketing in an ever-changing world

2020 has been a challenging year. With everything that’s happening in the world (particularly COVID-19), we’ve seen a big change in how consumers move around the world of retail as well.

We’ve seen a shift in where and how consumers shop, forcing retailers (and CP companies) to change the way they do business and interact with their customers. For some companies this has meant quickly setting up and expanding their online presence, and in other cases it has meant moving into completely new segments of the market.

Changing consumer behavior

Consumers have been spending a lot more time on their personal devices. This means that the channels in which companies advertise have also had to shift. Video content and other imagery has become more and more relevant over the past few years and research shows that consumers prefer this type of advertorial a lot more than traditional static advertising. Moreover, they’re more likely to take recommendations from peers, especially once they’re further along their journey. This is exemplified not just by the common use of social media influencers, but community reviews and ratings as well.

Because of this changing behavior, ROI can no longer simply be measured in resulting sales. It is up to you as a marketer to decide on appropriate KPIs to measure an ad campaign’s success.

Getting your ROI up

The way to ensure that your marketing is effective, is by sticking to a few basic principles:

Intent keywords – What are people actually looking for in the first phases of their journey? Use your SEO analytics. This is information you can actively look for yourself or you can set it up in your data management center to automatically get this information from the web for you.

Target your audience – You have the information you need to target the right core audience. It’s up to you to define who you want to reach at which channel.

Promote earned content – Earned content has a greater effect on customer behavior than bought content. As mentioned, editorial does better than ads with consumers.

Customize content – Now that you know who your consumers are, where to target them and how to reach them, you need to ensure that the content is relevant to them personally.

Publish less, participate more – Don’t talk “at” your customer. Engage, participate, respond. Allow consumers to be part of the conversation and react with relevant and topical content that does more than simply tell people to buy your products.

Be authentic – Whatever it is you share, whether it’s content or a conversation, it should make people want to engage with and share your content with their following.

Use your data – You have all the data you need to be most effective in advertising. There are several platforms that can support you with this and help with managing and using your data.

It all boils down to getting your data organized. With this data you’ll be able to identify your customer segments, know where to reach them, what to tell them and when to contact them. If you’re able to optimize your processes accordingly and get the tech to support your processes in this implemented correctly and effectively, you will make your life – and the life of your customer – that much easier.

Want to know how to get started? Reach out to us and we can assist you in exploring your options.

Author

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Sarah Khalil

Sarah is a business analyst in the Consumer Products & Retail market at Capgemini.