Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Consumer is both everywhere and nowhere:Be heedful

Sitting in a nice coffee bar while reading the headlines of a well known e-newspaper in my laptop. Suddenly I was going back to my child days when I was in teen.

During those days, every morning I was eagerly waiting for the paper boy to ring our door bell and handover the news paper to my dad. In the breakfast table I was keenly watching my dad turning the pages. I was just waiting for my turn to read my all time favourite “sports column”.

 
Now everything has changed with the evolution of information technology . We can get whatever we want by click of the mouse with the help of e-media in a digitalized world.  

The dawn of the digital age has transformed marketing. As consumer shift online- and advertising activity and media spend follow them –marketers have greater opportunities. They can assess human behaviour and produce decision more accurately based on hard data about the consumer they serve and channels they use. Simply put, digital marketing assists marketers leverage interactive digital channels to listen to what consumer say and respond appropriately.

While serving to its paragon users on one hand, on the other hand the more complex it has become. Campaigns increasingly span multiple market, languages, media channels and technology. 

Rather than liberating marketers to do juster and more relevant work. Big data (better to refer as smart data as every consumer touch point is a valuable piece of data and talking it together is possibly an antidote to fragmentation , which will be discussed later in the post ) has created an over whelming fragmented digital landscape. Marketers are grappling with the dual challenges of addressing enterprise marketing efficiency and effective consumer engagement. While speaking about digital marketing, the industry calls for a standardized framework for simplifying digital marketing. As facts and figures are concerned, around 30-35 percentage of marketing budget belongs to digital initiatives.
 
Today’s consumer is both everywhere and nowhere (better to interpret as omnipresent) and his/her attention is fractioned between multiple screens and platforms on different screens. Marketers like to address about TV, Desktop & Mobile as 3 screens, adding Tablet into the mix as the 4th screen will be a judicious move to reach those fragmented souls who are always on the target list as the “elusive on-the-go customer”.

More consumers are watching more and more content, but that viewing is dispersed across different platforms, starting with TV, Online Streaming and VOD to Podcast. Although some western markets are going through the cord cutting phenomena, Indian market is going through what I like to call as “Cord extension” phase, where consumers are adding broadband, mobile, DTH, DVR and IPTV connections over their existing Cable TV.

The strategy of Content everywhere and anywhere on any device & any screen has played its bit role in fragmentation but ever-changing consumption lifestyles has made it necessary to shift both strategy and focus for marketers that want to keep up with their audiences. Thus 2013 should see some brave moves by content owners worldwide, some even unthinkable few years back, to keep their audience with them.

1 comment:

  1. awesome writing...waiting for your next post....:)

    regards,

    maria jen

    ReplyDelete