Engaging the Modern-Day Consumer
At a time when consumers are ruling the roost, advertisers find it challenging to attract tech-savvy, on-the-go prospects. Customers don’t want to spare their precious time viewing advertisements that simply don’t make the cut. People expect succinct, precise, and exciting information at the right time. Today’s consumers are an unforgiving lot. A bad experience with a brand is enough to storm social pages with negative reviews until it bows down. There has never been a tougher time for companies to make their presence felt. That is why they need solutions that can delve deep into consumer behavior. The modern-day challenge Modern-day shoppers can be a mystery to marketers. Tech-savviness, social media involvement, and ever-changing demands are a lethal mix. Buyers don’t want to simply purchase products. They want to be part of certain lifestyles. Products don’t guide them to purchase. It is a heady mix of variables like alternatives, overall brand experience, peer reviews, social status, and state of mind that matters. Emotions play a major role and greatly influence and even determine consumer decisions. The AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) model, which in many ways was the ‘go to’ model for advertisers, seems to have lost its sheen. With solutions like transactional ads emerging, consumers often jump from attention to action. The span of attention is now less than 30 seconds and within this tiny window, brands have to struggle—not just to capture attention, but drive positive action from consumers. Relevance and action Staying relevant, precise, concise, and targeted is of prime importance today. Ad-tech programmatic solutions are bringing to the fore technologies like ad-server solutions that help companies automate their content and ad-exchange processes. These solutions help in customer profiling, targeting, and proliferating the right messages in a small window of time. That implies getting the job done with automation. By implementing ad-tech tools, companies are able to circumvent labor and focus on important aspects like targeting and metric tracking. The digital landscape often throws a curve at marketers. To add to that are finicky customers and the job of offering relevant and updated content at the same time. That is why programmatic solutions make life easier. The days of ‘spray and pray’ marketing are long gone. The modern-day tactic is taking care of customers and approaching them with the right information at the right time, all the time.
Making Sense of A Media-Fragmented World
Technology is evolving in leaps and bounds. What was innovative yesterday is obsolete today. With traditional channels like OOHs and TV slot ads fast being replaced by CMS and media planning solutions, all media channels have become fragmentized. The internet is possibly the most splintered of them all. While technological advances are the prime consequence of the ‘digital era’, they also pose a challenge to marketers. Consumers have become early adopters. They seek activities that can add value to their lifestyle. This being the mantra of today’s tech-savvy generation, marketers need to invariably work on new products and services. Added to that is the evolution and fragmentation of the media world. Companies need to keep pace with emerging channels of communication. Only then can they deliver device-agnostic, exciting content to touch base with audiences. Reach out and resonate Here are the top 5 ways how businesses can stay relevant in the market and resonate with their prospects in a media-fragmented space: Target audience: Companies need to understand who their customers are. Segmenting and selecting ideal customer groups is no longer simply based on demographics. Brands need to understand their audiences on psychographic and behavioral levels. Content rules: Customer engagement is the key to marketing success. At a time when prospects don’t want to be spammed with unnecessary advertising, marketers need to focus on engaging, and more personalized marketing collaterals. The need of the hour is creating fresh, relevant content to drive in-bound traffic. Go social: Firms need to incorporate social media strategies relevant to their business. Social media plays an integral role in shaping opinions, behaviors, and perceptions around brands. Social media is a great way to remain connected with their audience in real time. Think mobile: With websites soon to be phased out, firms need to start going mobile. Mobile internet and programmatic solutions will dominate the digital age. Big on big data: Companies need to make use of raw data to come up with business-relevant information that can result in effective marketing campaigns and increased ROIs. Have something to say about this blog post? Share it with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.