Amol Roy is the founder of Shutter Cast, a leading digital marketing agency. At the company, he manages the core team, cultivates relationships with clients, generates new business, ideates, and develops crucial technologies. Amol has worked on several start-up ideas since 2014. He has considerable expertise in augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, filming, digital marketing, and video editing. Amol’s familiarity with such a wide range of technologies led him to start a venture where he could capitalise on his talents.
Like all things, even the marketing world has undergone a massive change with the influx of the digital age. Traditional marketing agencies no longer dominate the marketing landscape. Digital agencies are equally needed, rather more needed now. And to adapt to all of the changes that technology has introduced, digital agencies need to become more technical. There is much that a digital agency needs to do to be able to master the craft and be proficient in it. In current times, the catchiest tune or the most creative ad campaign do not suffice to generate leads and scale conversions.
Especially, post the worldwide outbreak of Covid-19, it has become even more important for digital marketing agencies to leverage the latest technologies to their utmost advantage. For the satisfaction of their client, automation has come to play a very significant role. Automation has become indispensable for restructuring digital marketing initiatives which can go on to increase sales leads and allow messages for business communication with personalised content. Besides, it helps reduce the tendency of performing repetitive tasks and avoid delayed timelines.
How Digital Agencies are Using Digital Technologies
Digital has taken over the marketing ecosystem in a big way. Considering this, 35 percent of digital agencies recommended their clients to pivot to new and innovative marketing messages and cash in on the reducing competition. Apart from that, nearly 34 percent of agencies advised their clients increase investments in digital marketing during Covid-19, and 24 percent of these suggested moving to new channels altogether.
Digital agencies have also advised their clients to revise the core messaging of the brand to be shared with the audiences. Along with modified messaging, digital agencies are also extensively using Marketing Automation or MarTech – a confluence of marketing and technology – to enhance marketing by embedding technology into it. Different tech tools are used across different platforms for serving customers efficiently.
Inbound marketing automation utilizes the information available to understand the needs and demands of customers, and help deliver the information they are searching for to make a purchase, precisely when they need it and where they are looking for it. Digital agencies, thus, use marketing automation to know the evolving needs of their audience, and track their behaviours and interactions across different marketing channels.
This gives marketers insights and context to understand a customer’s challenges and how to lead them down the funnel. The highly effective marketing automation not only collates data from different channels but even uses those channels to send the marketing messages. Hence, the success of a campaign relies on the various channels which influence a consumer’s buying decision.
Digital agencies also use AI tools to gain in-depth understanding of consumer behaviour and make the appropriate recommendation at the right time. Artificial intelligence technology helps marketers gauge how a consumer will react to a particular ad, videos, or any other touchpoint and what their general browsing behaviour is. Unlike a machine, humans cannot assess and analyse a large set of data in a limited timeframe. This is where AI-based tools and automation are proving to be a gamechanger.
The automation software is helping digital agencies streamline their workflow and track the progress of their campaigns and tasks. It also increases the operational efficiency of businesses as they can now manage various channels with daily tasks automated. Consequently, marketing agencies can now use certain practices that enhance user experience and bring in more revenue.
AI and machine learning (ML) are together improving communications, helping agencies analyse data and gain useful insights, track efficiency of operations and forecast customer behaviours. These technologies also optimize product line pricing strategy, thus eliminating manual work. As brands learn about customer expectations using AI and ML, it also helps achieve customer satisfaction. AI and ML also assist in narrowing down the scope of marketers’ data, enabling them to precisely focus on things which consumers are engaging with and are likely to engage with in the near future.
Role of Data & Analytics
Data has emerged as another area which has proven ripe for greater innovation. Mass untargeted broadcasting of marketing messages no longer works. Rather, data is primarily at the heart of all marketing strategies. The world around us is quickly pivoting away from the static and rigid experiences and towards data, insights, and customization-driven assistant which knows well how certain analytics must be presented.
Data provides brands important insights into consumer expectations and their buying patterns. Through the use of Google analytics, digital agencies can easily uncover a tremendous amount of data about their website which can be used for improving their marketing and business development strategies.
As more devices remain connected, digital agencies can effectively devise smart, targeted and user-centric communication. Using technologies, marketers slice and dice different kinds of data into actionable insights and specific marketing campaigns. Brands now use complex and technical combination of personal data, location data and environment data to target their customers with appropriate message on the right device and at the right time.
Summing Up
While it is obvious that the repercussions of the global pandemic will continue to have long-term implications, there is always the probability of turning a crisis into an opportunity. The ability to expand and be agile as and when required provides better security in unprecedented times and can often be the deciding factor between businesses surviving or failing. While as customers, having a deep understanding of digital agencies leads to smarter decisions that can result in better partnerships, increased spending efficiency and judicious use of internal and external resources.
For digital agencies, now is actually the time to gauge the change in and evolution of trends of the audiences’ behaviour. They must use the latest technologies to notice everything ranging from places they visit, the priorities they have, their likes and dislikes, where they are putting their money and where they are spending it. Marketers must now redefine their business goals, be extra focused, track the latest trends and aim to evolve continuously.