Digital Platforms have been the integral part of organizations today with prime ideas concentrated to create better customer value, seamless brand engagement, and wider business impact. In the past decade, digital marketing has evolved as a major component of the overall enterprise marketing strategy. Many enterprises are jumping the bandwagon, based on the social world facts as well as because of foresight offered by market research agencies. The investment towards digital channels is still at its nascent stage, as the approach opens up new business possibilities for enterprises.
With the volatility of the marketing scenario and the increasing changes with regards to marketing strategies, the flavour of digital and social channels connected to traditional channels remains minimal. The advent of smart mobility though is changing the scenario. One can witness the convergence of all mediums with the help of smartphones, which is bridging this digital divide. As per the Deloitte report, Bridging the Digital Divide, mobile and digital channels have influenced 19% and 36% of in-store sales in 2013. The statistics indicate that the social web has become an integral factor to boost customer footfalls in retail locations.
Fig. 1. Influence of mobile and other digital medium on in-store sales
With the help of smartphones, the number of people with access to e-stores has risen considerably. People are increasingly using mobile phones and tablets to visit websites and portals today. But the enterprises still face decision problems owing to the fact that the digital marketing team and the traditional marketing team, still work in isolation. It happened with particular Walmart case where a customer complained about the drastic differential price between the website and the store. Today, organizations cater to broader segments and a wider market, which means that the differentiation would only tend to increase. The need of the hour is incorporation of cross-functional departments with centralized marketing strategy and execution plan, based on on-premise experience.
There is also a dire need to differentiate mobile strategy from digital strategy in enterprises. Unless, there is significant effort to undergo this demarcation, chances are, mobile strategy would be limited to being a subset of the multi-focused digital campaign. In this scenario, enterprises are bound to miss out on key developments, or even might just give superficial numbers on seamless experience to mobile users, rather than measure the effectiveness of mobile campaigns efficiently.
Web platforms, for long have depended on analytics for decision-making. Tests like A/B Testing allows enterprises to make incremental corrections and create long standing patterns that help them replicate the user experience. Mobile applications and platforms which have matured in terms of UX, have not yet matured on this front. By assessing and understanding customer’s interactions and their behavioural patterns, along with their interests, one can bundle relevant features within the application, thus affecting the decision-making process on the practical front. The advent of Big Data Analytics helps enterprises to focus on offline marketing at specific locations by deriving insights from granular mobile data. Comprehensive information garnered from the real-time activities of a customer or a prospect can append the scope of deliverables to immediate clients. Big Data applications like MongoDB can also deliver agility, scalability and veracity to address multiple data types and devices, expanding customer base and opening new revenue streams. This approach will also allow enterprise in understanding customer patterns, thereby enabling a transparent communication model between the diverse on-premise teams.
Figure 2: Enterprises need to focus on mobile analytics and actionable insights,
more than the overall user experience
In conclusion, enterprises need to realise that the mobile market is not just an extension of the overall marketing plan. In fact, smart mobility is viewed to be the key driver to revenue conversions according to analysts. Hence, irrespective of the operating systems and the rest of the mobile infrastructure, enterprises need to build a relevant and concrete mobile plan, which converges the online and the offline marketing plans efficiently.
[1] Bridging the Digital Divide: Deloitte – Click Here
[2] Use Cases for Mobile Apps: MongoDB – Click Here
