Customer Relationship Measurement – Meaning, its need and importance
Customers are the most important part of business. There cannot be any business without them. Only satisfied customers will be interested in buying and they will also refer other customers to buy. By measuring customer satisfaction a supplier can maintain a quality and long term relationship with customers and secure their future business and financial […]
Building Customer Loyalty Through Modern CRM Strategies
Customer loyalty is the foundation of sustained success for any supplier or retailer. A clear sign of a successful product or service is repeat customers. Businesses can keep people coming back by creating content and experiences that their audience genuinely connects with. Sounds simple, right? But in order to create those genuine connections between your […]
Technology Competence – Meaning and its Features
Introduction Technology is a term that is frequently used in the business world. It is a term habitually related to science. But there is a significant difference between the two. Science comprises of outcomes of basic academic studies whereas technology infers to the relevant application of science. This difference is critical when it is to […]
Features of CRM
Customer Relationship Management is a strategy which is customized by an organization to manage and administrate its customers and vendors in an efficient manner for achieving excellence in business. It is primarily entangled with following features: Customers Needs- An organization can never assume what actually a customer needs. Hence it is extremely important to interview […]
Environmental Scanning – Internal & External Analysis of Environment
Organizational environment consists of both external and internal factors. Environment must be scanned so as to determine development and forecasts of factors that will influence organizational success. Environmental scanning refers to possession and utilization of information about occasions, patterns, trends, and relationships within an organization’s internal and external environment. It helps the managers to decide […]
All of us who exist online and on social media websites as well as use Apps would have noticed that we enter a humungous amount of information about ourselves and our likes and preferences as well as dislikes and our objections.
For instance, any registration to a website or an app requires basic information about us as well as advanced data about our preferences to make the website or the app customizable to our taste.
In addition, whenever we “link” our personal profiles on Facebook, Twitter and any of the social media websites as well as on Google and LinkedIn, we are often asked to “allow” the app or the website to access our profile information as well as our contacts list apart from permitting such sites to “post” on our pages.
Even when we “like” or comment on social media, that it leaves a “Digital Footprint” as well as a source of data and information for the websites.
Have you ever wondered about where all this data and information that is collected goes and how it is used by marketers to profile and segment our tastes and distastes to customize marketing and advertising messages to us?
In addition, have you also thought why Google and Facebook, as well as Twitter and to some extent, LinkedIn, are all free to use even when using advanced features?
In other words, the fact that you are using such services and facilities as literally no cost to you might make you wonder whether these firms are altruistic.
In business as in life, nothing comes for free and the invisible price that we pay for the Digital Footprints we leave behind online is the source of many advantages to marketers who then “mine” the data and the information gleaned from the various websites and apps we use to target and segment us using advanced Big Data and Analytics tools.
In other words, by leaving a rich “goldmine” of data about ourselves to the marketers, we are in effect helping them to market and sell their goods and services to us in a more targeted and customized manner.
Indeed, all social media websites and apps sell the data about ourselves to marketers who in turn, use that data apart from the websites themselves customizing our feeds and pages to target and segment us in conjunction with the marketers.
This is the reason why data is the new “Holy Grail” for marketers as they use the humungous amount of information online to position their goods and services in a fine and granular manner by “refining” and “mining” the data.
For instance, even the basic data about ourselves is enough for marketers to collect a rich dataset on our age, gender, location, and income and jobs so that such data can be used to “direct” ads at us that are relevant to us.
Also, once we leave a Digital Footprint that in turn leads to more finely targeting and segmenting which can also be used to suggest recommendations about our future consumer behavior.
Indeed, firms such as Amazon are already intuiting and sensing our consumer behavior even before we undertake such initiatives which mean that soon other firms would also develop such Godlike abilities to predict how we would behave and consume in the future.
While this has ethical and normative implications in the sense that nobody should have that much power over us, the fact remains that we are well and truly into a future where customized marketing and targeted advertising would become a reality.
We had come a long way from the times when mass marketing was the norm, and advertising was still in the baby years of segmenting and targeting ads based on broad demographic and psychographic data.
While the advent of Television was the first step in the process of fine-tuning consumer targeting, the arrival and emergence of the internet were the next Quantum Leap as far as marketers were concerned.
With the Smartphone revolution, the stakes have considerably increased, and we are now at a stage where our minds and soon our bodies are going to be wired into a Worldwide Mind where our next moves can be predicted by Algorithms, and Big Data-Enabled Analytics.
As mentioned earlier, this has ethical implications for the way in which we shop and live and already, there are strong indications that an emerging army of consumer protection groups are readying to take on the Big Tech firms over concerns about profiling consumers and using machines and algorithms to create a world where power is ever more concentrated in the hands of marketers and Big Tech firms.
Moreover, such customization and profiling can also be used for nefarious purposes wherein those who have access to such data can misuse that information as well as abuse their power.
On balance, it appears as though that the best thing for individuals to do online and on their Smartphones is to be careful about the Digital Footprints that they leave apart from reading the fine print as well as studying the privacy settings that are present on every website and app so that some control is exercised over personal information.
To conclude, we are on the cusp of a future that is both exciting and alarming and the way things play out between the marketers and the consumer groups would determine how the future of Digital Marketing would evolve.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
