If there’s one thing we can confidently predict about the movement of the marketing world, it’s the continual shift toward faster, toward immediacy, toward urgency—toward the speed of now. It’s a world where tailored experiences and instant gratification are no longer nice-to-haves, but have-to-haves; where “fast” is now a standard by which consumers make decisions.
At our recent Speaker Series, “The Speed of Now,” we invited our partners from Google, DOMO, and Sprinklr to share how today’s customer needs influence the areas of paid media, business intelligence, social listening, and other cross-channel outlets.
If you were not able to attend the event, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Read below for some of the panel’s insights on the importance of real-time responses in driving business decisions, and how you can use these learnings to guide your marketing plan for 2018 and beyond.
How are these different platforms operating to keep up with the speed of now?
Today, Google reaches over 94 percent of the U.S. population. Our Google rep Darragh O’Dougherty notes that one great thing about the platform now is the ability to create easy plug-and-play text ads. With complete control over positioning to reach consumers at the right place and the right time, Google is able to pull out what is important to your business and your brand at any given moment.
However, Rob Middleton over at Sprinklr adds that there is also a paradigm shift toward a customer management approach versus an ad factory approach, challenging brands to focus more on managing relations with current customers in addition to acquiring new customers. With this shift in mind, Sprinklr is committed to building a customer enterprise solution that leverages social listening, giving marketers more real-time insight into social trends, and thus allowing brands to jump in on a conversation, respond, and get even more engagement.
While Google and Sprinklr spear the front end, DOMO operates more on the back end. Our expert Dan Roden explains that DOMO exists in the connectivity between services like Sprinklr and Google, putting that real-time data into marketers’ hands more quickly. As an example, DOMO allows businesses to see and analyze social interactions through a platform like Sprinklr so they can easily determine what is working well and what needs more attention. DOMO’s typical customer in the marketing space has an average of seven different data sources that that would traditionally be monitored separately. However, aggregating the data is often a back-and-forth process, so by the time you receive the information you need, it’s yesterday’s weather. DOMO brings real-time data into one actionable dashboard, giving marketers what they need to make decisions, as well as providing visibility for other departments so they can work more symbiotically.
What are the top things customers are asking for that will make their efforts around “real-time” easier and more effective?
A key ingredient in the movement toward “real time” is the need to break down silos, throughout the cross-channel world and even down to individual company departments. At Sprinklr, Middleton identifies a desire to create new, shared spaces, allowing for the easy flow of information and the integration of channels.
For DOMO, Roden says that the top request is about helping people get a handle on spend. When trying to manage an overload of data, people often don’t know where and what they’re spending, and usually find out after the fact that they were not on budget. Additionally, customers are interested in the eternal velocity around metrics—namely, how much time it will take until the action they are looking for will occur. If a business is trying to target enterprise customers, they need to determine which digital sources or efforts are converting with the highest velocity in the enterprise space. DOMO focuses on helping customers establish that baseline.
On the Google side of things, O’Dougherty finds that brands are increasingly reliant on programmatic and the GDN. It may not deliver dollar for dollar the way that Search does, but investing in the GDN can be very cost efficient. He also encourages clients to turn on text ads to give brands that extra reach.
With the holidays approaching, what do marketers need to keep in mind when it comes to real-time marketing?
Combining insights from Google, Sprinklr, and DOMO, there are three main things brands should consider moving into this holiday season:
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Share information between your digital team and on-the-ground delivery team as soon as possible. From Roden’s perspective, keeping the flow of information as timely and efficient as possible is key to holiday season success, no matter if you’re an online or brick-and-mortar retailer.
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Play into the social sphere when advertising for the holidays. Middleton indicates that involving social listening in holiday campaigns has proven to be very effective, especially when leveraging product reviews to generate more brand trust.
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Think smart phone first. If you can’t access your product on mobile, O’Dougherty advises businesses to provide store locations and a call destination so customers still have some type of call to action.
We’d like to thank our guest panelists for sharing their insights on the marketing world with us! Subscribe to our mailing list below to get updates about more upcoming events.