By Chris Gaebler, Kaspersky Lab North America
The digital era has brought about tremendous changes to the marketing industry, from content, to ROI, to measurability and everything in between. As marketers it’s our job to evolve with the times and use new and innovative methods to ensure our campaigns are effective and the results are long-lasting. Here are three best practices to keep in mind:
Personalize Content
Through social media, email, web, apps and video, there is a vast amount of information that is now readily available through digital means. Because this information is at the fingertips of consumers, marketers are challenged to put information into smaller, easily digestible snippets, while at the same time ensuring that content is compelling and memorable. Additionally, it’s important for customers to feel a sense of personalization from the content. When they are constantly inundated with information, it can be easy for them to feel lost in a sea of brands, and before you know it, your campaign is just one more in the sea. Content should appeal to the human side of consumers. How can we tell if the snippets of information we thought were compelling and memorable were, in fact, compelling and memorable?
Use Metrics To Drive Improvement
In the past, marketers would simply create a campaign, sit back and see if it worked. There were no formal measurement guidelines or tools. Nowadays, marketing is much more accountable for ROI: it takes money to create a campaign, but was the campaign impactful? What ROI did the campaign bring in for the company? There are many tools and metrics out there today — many of which are a direct result of the digital era — to enable marketers to measure their success and learn and grow from their campaigns. Furthermore, as humans, we instinctively look for what is “quality” — it’s the human desire to improve. Through the use of metrics and measurability, marketers can see what is working, what isn’t working and how we can make things better.
Strive For Customer Engagement
The digital era offers a more open means of feedback and communication among marketers and their targets. It’s always been vital for marketers to listen to what customers and partners need and want, but through email and social media, gathering that feedback is a lot more seamless and easy to act upon, almost immediately. Think of discussion threads on company blogs and comments on Facebook and Twitter. Receiving and responding to customer feedback can now happen almost instantly. This leads to greater engagement and collaboration, thus enabling companies to consistently improve the customer experience.
As Senior Vice President of Marketing at Kaspersky Lab North America, Chris is responsible for overseeing all North American marketing activities including driving programs to improve customer engagement and experience with the brand and products.
Chris brings 17 years of experience in marketing in the technology industry. Prior to joining Kaspersky Lab in 2012 Chris held senior marketing positions at Pulsepoint, a marketing technology company, Sony Electronics, and Accenture, a global management consulting and technology services firm. He has written and spoken widely about connecting customer needs with technology solutions, and has presented at many conferences, including The Conference Board, Consumer Electronics Association and Forrester Research.