Change: The driving force of marketing
Both in and out of the corporate world, it is now undoubtedly the era of the marketer. More specifically, it is the era of the marketer who can adapt well to a rapidly changing consumer market.
The internet shifts the goal posts
Marketing is being radically altered by the internet, and if you’re prepare to wrap your head around shifting paradigms and think creatively, it’s going to be good for you.
More and more, consumers are dictating exactly when and how the want to be informed of new services and products, and they also have a bigger say in where to buy them. With DStv’s Explora PVR and Google, consumers now have entertainment and information on demand.
Traditional advertising in radio, television and newspapers is still going strong in South Africa, but as bandwidth becomes cheaper and more consumers connet to the internet, online marketing is growing.
An increasing number of people are searching for and buying services and products online, and this trend is expected to increase exponentially in South Africa over the next few years.
A brave new world
Social media has proved to be hugely powerful in all spheres, including business and marketing. Consumers have a voice with which to talk to brands, so the communication now flows in more than one direction. This can have enormously beneficial consequences for a brand, or – conversely – very dire consequences indeed.
Those brands that do not listen to their consumers will only succeed in providing two levels of poor service: in the offline and online worlds. In a brave new world where consumers have more and more choice and agency, a change-resistant attitude like this will doom companies to failure.
As internet connectivity becomes faster and cheaper, consumers are keying in their demand for sports results, entertainment and news, as well as for information about services and products, and they choose when to do it. Aggregator sites, for example, travel sites which find the cheapest flights, and products like Apple’s Siri are examples of how people use technology to help them find what they’re looking for and get the best deals. Marketers can now target their audiences more precisely.
Another major benefit of online marketing is that it is cheaper than traditional forms of marketing, and sometimes completely, as in social media.
The flip side
With all these benefits, what could possibly go wrong in online marketing? Well, more empowered consumers mean customer service needs to improve rapidly. Consumers can – and do – use social media to complain about poor quality products and bad service. Because they can react immediately, the complaints can be quite emotional. It goes without saying that angry outbursts on the web can be very detrimental to a brand.
For this reason, monitoring your social media and forums is a must, so that problems can be dealt with swiftly, before the brand-bashing conversation get bigger.
The bottom line is that marketers need to understand the pros and cons of operating in the online environment, and be able to think out of the box so as to make most effective use of online trends.
