A one-size-fits-all corporate strategy for business may have worked in the past but now is the era of personalized targeting. When former basketball great Magic Johnson was once opening TGIF and Starbucks stores in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he deviated from norms and innovated based on neighbourhood segmentation. Specialty wines got introduced at some stores for chains unheard of before. Amazon Web Services survived business challenges from industry giants such as Oracle, Google, IBM and Microsoft only because it had found its niche marker. Ford is one of the pioneering organizations for this concept of finding a space for oneself. Starbucks has faced several challenges over the years, not least when fast food chains started exposing its high coffee prices. But Starbucks went back to its core product and emerged stronger from the financial crisis of 2008.  

The Internet of Things (IoT) is already impacting several business processes across industries but it is set to alter digital marketing in a big way. IoT will enable respective products to move away from being a platform only to actually being able to conduct two-way interactions. A direct communication will be built between customers, sellers and vendors. IoT also enables products to shift ecosystems and thus allowing isolated items to move towards data centres or apps where customer reach is highest. The entire gamut of products can now be personalized to provide service to the consumers. Brand interaction can now be automated without need for third parties.

It is a well known aspect that social media is an integral part of modern day digital marketing efforts. What is less well known however is the fact that social media is also influencing financial services. Online peer to peer lenders such as Lending Club and Prosper are leveraging this tool to reach maximum audience. A study byAccenture has also confirmed that this helps in segmentation and real time marketing while also the acquisition costs reduce. Customer servicing gets a boost as well. Enormous amount of data is generated which fuels research into new product development. Overall costs reduce for marketers as well as final customers. And then this is also spawning several new business models. Some challenges though still exist in this mode. For one, banks remain mired in traditional ways of business. Regulations are still crippling efforts are making this process more inclusive. Social media giants themselves are leveraging their wide reach by entering banking and financial services themselves in process cutting out the traditional players.

Social media has been increasingly wedded as a crucial cog in digital marketing efforts. It is now actually changing business strategies in remarkable ways. Due to social media giants such as Facebook, the market scope for individual organizations is global. Desired market can be filtered easily clicking a few buttons only. It enables improved user engagement. Social media also elicits creativity at workplace to get ahead of competitors. Interestingly even competitors can be known of better as they too would have launched social media campaigns that are open for all to view unlike traditional marketing models. Social media creates a sense of convergence where brand appears everywhere increasing awareness among target audience. The right social media strategy can boost business margins eventually realizing substantial revenues.

Customer experience, engagement and management have been found to be working in triangular formations. The abbreviations CEX, CEM and CRM are incomplete without one another in the present context. Data based business analytics is used by organizations for decision making purposes. Click behaviour of individual users is measured over years. Loyalty programmes are similarly pitched. Social media tools are also geared to gauge this usage pattern. Even GPS is used to enable location tracking that helps retail chains. Predictive algorithm is being increasingly used by organizations. However, all of this is still at relative stage of infancy. This is due to several reasons, one of them being the fear of loss of privacy. Also there aren’t enough sensors around. Crucially while organizations tend to possess treasure troves of data, they aren’t yet aware in which all ways the same may be used. Customer engagement is a continuous process aided by a series of steps. It requires the coordinated integration of various touch points.

In this day and age of digital marketing, brands can leverage online social networks with a more human touch. Companies or brands can be befriended or liked online by the clicking of a single button. Brands then share the same space as authentic friends whose actions and pictures we may like from time to time. Thus brands are occupying a very emotional space and it is thus that it becomes imperative that they display the warmth of human friends. Using Twitter for example, friends can communicate over 140 odd characters even though we may not actually meet that friend for months. It is this gap that brands can bridge by fulfilling such emotional needs of people. Too much exposure though is not desired as it may backfire. This is because social media platforms also become tools for human envy to develop from and this needs to be avoided.

A studyconducted has provided us with 4 As which marketers must know of. The first one is Accountability. Just as customers demand transparency from the firm, the organization would expect internal accountability from the marketing team. Then there is Agility which dictates that marketers must be able to seamlessly move between brands, marketing channels and approaches. The marketing objectives must Align with the long term corporate strategy of the organization. Finally there is the Acumen part which involved proficiency in the various marketing strategies of the present times. The marketer must be able to gauge customer insights, evaluate all kinds of analytics, manage customer data and Plan for innovations.