“It’s no longer digital marketing, it’s marketing in a digital world,” says Joseph Puthussery, vice president, digital marketing at Cisco. “The world has transformed, and every marketer has to think about how expectations have changed.” Here is the 5 pillars of digital transformation
Customer Experience
Puthussery highlights the importance of connecting with the customer at every touchpoint and not only through the website. Social, advertising and digital all have to work together with live events. “We need to combine data and keep the journey going in an omnichannel experience,” he says.
Content Marketing
With the change in both business and marketing environment the job of content writers has also evolved. Rather than concentrating on 30-page white papers, writers should be focused on content that will create a social conversation and create engagement. “You need to identify personas and create the content that will take the customer on the desired journey,” he says.
Analytics and Insights
“We have 30 billion records of data,” he says. It should be noted that there is no point to having huge amounts of data unless it cannot be used. It has been one of the biggest investments of Cisco to be able to connect every single touchpoint back to data to understand the overall customer experience.
Performance Marketing
“We’re good at looking at the bottom of the funnel—it’s easy to look at pipeline and bookings, but the real question is what do you do at the top of the funnel,” Puthussery notes. Cisco is aiming to study harder metrics to improve its marketing operations through an engagement score that takes different touchpoints into account to score each customer interaction.
Automation
Cisco has built a strong technological foundation comprising of systems to manage the video, search and other marketing strategies. The company is also focusing heavily on machine learning. “We’ll augment as we go,” Puthussery added.
Some essentials to keep in mind while creating a digital marketing process
Targeting the Right Customers with the Right Option
This is the first step in process of development of an effective marketing plan. The marketing plan should focus on the target audience. The organization should look to deliver more value to this target group of consumers. There are a number of ways by which an organization can select their target audience.
Segmentation
This is the most popular way of selecting the target group of customers, in order to achieve the desired results. Factors like a number of competitors, the average profitability of the segment should be considered before selecting a segment. The market (consumers) can be divided into segments on the basis of behaviour, demographics, company-specific information, psychology, and geography.
Personas
Personas somewhat aim at creating a fictional picture of the target consumer by identifying how they act, their goals, skills, attitudes and environment. This helps the organization to engage with the consumers at a more personal level.
Jobs or Work To Be Done
This method of dividing the consumers not only helps the organization is assessing their needs and preferences but also helps them to know which job is hardest and most important.
Ensuring that it is Easier for the Customers to Find the Business
All the marketing efforts of the organization shall reap no result unless the consumer is able to find and reach the business easily. It is the responsibility of the organization to ensure that prospective consumers don’t find any difficulty in reaching the business. In order to connect well with the customers, the business needs to be a part of their world. This can be done in many ways by using techniques like influencer marketing, social media marketing, retargeting, advertising etc.
Using Right Technology
It is very crucial for the organization to select the right technology. This selection depends on the maturity of the marketing program of the organization. For a new organization that is just getting started, it is logical to use simple and low-cost tools like Squarespace, whereas large and more established organizations having a higher budget can opt for a more integrated platform like HubSpot.
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