The driving forces behind marketing in 2022: Consumer experience and digital marketing

As per the Adobe Digital Trends Report 2021, empathy is a key consideration in marketing as it provides an insight into people’s motivations. As the pandemic continues, brands must sustain meaningful conversations and provide more personalised and customised experiences....

The global pandemic has redefined the relationship between brands and consumers bringing alive new channels of communication. The ‘new normal’ has led to a rapid evolution in consumer behaviour and expectations. Marketers and brand leaders are focussing efforts to drive higher engagement with audiences through customised user experiences. All of this has catapulted the role of digital as a medium of choice for marketers over traditional as it helps brands to relook at their messaging to adopt a more empathetic and personalised approach thereby connecting more relevantly with their audiences. Not surprising therefore is the shift that marketing is seeing towards the direction of adaptability, personalisation, and relevance - driving the importance of digital and tech-led marketing over traditional platforms.

As the year 2022 takes shape, brands continue to evolve, learn and adapt to combat these challenging yet exciting times powered by a digital first approach.

An Evolved Consumer

Today’s consumers are more mindful of the products or services they consume - technological advancements and access to information at their fingertips has facilitated active product/service search prior to purchase. This growing awareness has pushed brands to redefine agile and cater to the needs of an informed consumer in real time. The current world context has added additional expectations from consumers on key aspects such as Safety and Convenience. Thus, in the past two years, brands have had to relook at their strategies to incorporate efficient solutions that provide an empowered status and immediate gratification to the consumer.

As per the Adobe Digital Trends Report 2021, empathy is a key consideration in marketing as it provides an insight into people’s motivations. As the pandemic continues, brands must sustain meaningful conversations and provide more personalised and customised experiences. Marketers need to become more mindful and conscious of their messaging, focusing on establishing a relationship within the emotional realm of the consumer by creating campaigns that spread positivity and make the brand more human.

The Potency of Digital Mediums

Brands have realized the power of digital media to optimally and effectively engage with their audience. Using advanced data analytics digital media helps companies target very specific consumer demographics - thereby allowing for personalized and relevant engagement, through the consumer journey of interacting with the product or service. This helps companies not just ensure a great consumer experience but also optimize and drive great ROI for the brand.

Digital marketing has presented brands with an array of opportunities to interact with the consumer. Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube have been great platforms to generate brand awareness and loyalty. Through virtual events and influencer collaborations, brands have been able to drive engagement and active conversations with consumers - this has fuelled not just sales but active brand communities which helps aid new customer acquisition by driving brand top of mind. In the times to come, marketers must continue to leverage the art of storytelling and embrace a mix of these tools to keep their consumers engaged. Building a strong social media strategy can be fruitful towards maintaining a brand's relationship with consumers who expect a more one-to-one personalised approach.

Additionally, digital marketing enhances flexibility in marketing as fixes/changes can be made with real time basis feedback versus traditional media. This has also relieved brands from the exorbitant costs spent on advertising traditionally.

Targeted and Measurable Impact

The consumer today is spoilt for choice - many brands are vying for consumer attention and share of wallet - each trying to entice the consumer in their own way. Digital marketing allows brands to sharply identify their bulls eye target audience based on demographic and behavioural factors such as age, gender, location, interests, and preferences. Added to this, marketers are powered with knowledge of what consumers are searching for and what problems the brand can solve for - this powerful information coupled with the definition of consumer cohorts helps marketers to relevantly drive targeted communication depending on what part of the purchase journey the consumer is at; helping consumers easily navigate the journey from searching for a solution to a problem to final purchase.

Great brands are not stopping at purchase and continue engagement post purchase to understand and record consumer experience and curate a review mechanism to ensure new customers feel confident to come on board the brand, and current consumers continue to stay loyal.

Marketers are actively investing in social media marketing, email marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Online Reputation Management (ORM) to achieve the above and drive better control over media monies. Powered with strong post campaign metrics such as reach, impressions, views, CTR (Click Through Rate), etc. available by the campaign - brands have never been in a better place to optimise campaigns and media spends real time, course correct and deliver efficiency for every dollar spent.

Digital media as an incremental reach media alone is a passé - for companies to be competitive they will have to go for a Digital first media approach. This puts added responsibility on companies to identify audiences sharply and engage relevantly to ensure brands have a positive presence in the digital realm. It is the era where brands have real relationships with consumers on digital and consumers will reciprocate immediately to the brands actions. The need of the hour is to relook at our strategies to accommodate and deliver tailored customer experiences while staying agile and connecting on a human level to drive profitability, loyalty, and growth.