The main challenges of digital marketing

Digital marketing transformation is a recent topic which raises a lot of challenges. To be efficient, it needs to be well understood or it would be useless. The article that I chose to comment tries to describe the five main challenges of the digital marketing transformation. The author is Hassan Bawab, the CEO of Magic Lopix, a global integrated marketing agency, and he is also writer, speaker and consultant.

In the first part, he mentioned that companies « struggle with incorporating the necessary changes into their business processes ». Indeed, some companies not directly related to the digital industry like banks, convenience stores or craftsmen for example may think that the digital transformation don't concern them. In reality, all businesses could benefit from digital even if its implementation isn’t easy : it requires time to change processes and to implement it, it’s costly, it also implies coordination and strategy because it should not be done randomly.

In fact, the challenge is to learn how to use the digital to improve his marketing : it’s not about "using digital" just because everyone is doing it. It has to bring a new value for the customer, like an improvement of a current process, or an innovation. The main point is that using digital should not transform what it’s already good in bad.

One of the challenge evoked in the article is about data. As Hassan Bawab said it, « customer data is at the core of any top company ». Data could serve businesses in the way that it allows to know better their customers, indeed, data needs to be collected and companies should learn how to use it.

Another challenge is to interact with data in a way that protect users and give them control on it. Companies working in Europe or dealing with physical europeans residents have to take into account the new European regulation GDPR applicable from May 2018. It’s a relevant thing to manage data but it has to be done safely. The author suggests that « the best solution is to gather and centralize big data into platform », which makes the access to data more efficient for employees. It becomes fast to exchange data, more accessible and it’s more convenient for companies which have several offices with different local hours. Nevertheless, companies should be really careful about securing his data. Hacking is a current threat, and if hackers could access to all data in one attack, it will have more consequences than today !

Source : pexels.com

Digital marketing is quite recent so traditional marketers have to be educated. Behaviors are not identical, tools and reaction of public neither. Digital marketing and marketing are quite different and some companies know it, as the article reveals it : 19% of companies are planning to appoint a chief digital officer. It shows that they are conscious about the new way to talk to customers. He wants to feel unique and this is why he is more receptive with a personalized experience. One more time, this is where data collecting could make the difference. The more you understand your customer needs, the more you can communicate efficiently with him and improve his current customer experience.

Another point of the article is that digital marketing is shifting to the mobile. Even if the customer stay less time on a web page, he will use more his mobile than his computer to look for an information. As a consequence, it becomes mandatory to provide good mobile experiences and deliver fastly the information. It could be a way to take advantage on competitors, even if today, using digital isn’t really a competitive advantage but more like a necessity.