Starting from where I left in my previous blog on new generation of solutions based on nexus of converging forces – social, mobile, cloud and information, I thought this time I will focus on a specific function “Marketing” and how the nexus of conversing forces will be influencing it in the coming years. Gartner is predicting that by 2015 the marketing budget allocated to retaining customers and increasing loyalty through customer service will more than double and by 2017 the CMOs will spend more on IT than the CIOs. Initially it may sound over the top, but think about it. Marketing organization needs to talk to the current customers, influence them to retain and increase loyalty and on the other hand educate/create a need for the product/solution to acquire new customers. So marketing and customer service departments will have to work in cohesion within an organization to successfully deliver on customer retention and loyalty strategies whereas to acquire new customers marketers will reach out to customer through both traditional (print media, Banners, SignBoards, TV, Road Shows, etc ) and new channels (Mobile, Social Media, Video, Web etc).
Marketing is about communicating effectively with both existing and potential customers to influence them. Traditional methods of marketing would not work in today’s context because the nexus of converging forces are transforming user behavior and revolutionizing business and society. The consumerization of IT as a result of the availability of excellent devices, interfaces and applications has helped people to become more sophisticated users of technology, and the individual has been empowered. To reach out to, connect with and influence these empowered, technology savvy people, marketers will have to adopt new technology, processes and methodologies. This article “6 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2012” posted in boston.com talks about some very interesting developments around Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Mobile and Tablet, facebook, Video, Internationalization and Localization. From technology prospective, I can at broad level map these to Online, Mobile, Social, and Information. Clearly we are seeing that the nexus of converging forces has started to influence marketing function and technology has already started to play an important role.
Marketing Budgets as a Percent of Firm Budgets
As per the CMO Survey conducted by Christine Moorman from Duke University, marketing spend is on the rise. As per her there are six key reasonsdriving this shift which include increase in adoption of social media in marketing, big data, business focus on growth, long-term focus and so on. Digital Marketing is the future and it will rock the marketing world. That the marketing going through a shift a new kind of service providers would and are emerging to help the marketing team with this digital marketing transition. Gartner has already published its first magic quadrant for digital marketing agencies. Looking forward to lots of disruption in this space in the coming years.
