By Garima Sinha | Director of Marketing, APAC, Wipro
Marketing technology (MarTech) has seen exponential growth in the last few years (see Figure 1) to around 8,000 solutions today. Even before COVID-19 hit the world, marketing was undergoing a major digital transformation. In my last blog I noted that MarTech will continue to be one of the four key focus areas for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in the post-COVID-19 world.
In a highly digital world and facing shrinking budgets, marketers have an opportunity to innovate with MarTech solutions. Technology can help the CMO become a more strategic partner to business and help them answer critical questions around customer needs, product features, demand forecasting, pricing, targeting and segmenting, campaign effectiveness, customer support, etc. in real-time. In fact, a Wipro survey found that MarTech proficiency was a key skill requirement for CMOs.
Technology projects that leveraged artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), or sentiment analytics might have been considered ambitious just a few years ago, but now they are a necessity for the savvy marketer. This is true especially in Asia where marketers need to stay focused on mobile-first micro-moments. The key areas of technology impact and highest number of solutions in APAC will be around social media, relationships, content management, and customer experience.
Digital technology will be critical to sail through the disruption caused by COVID-19. Let’s take a look at some of the key technology areas that will be important in the coming days:
- Technologies to understand customer needs: The current crisis demands business leaders to think about how to make businesses more risk adaptive rather than risk-averse. The COVID-19 lockdown and its recessionary aftermath have drastically changed consumption patterns, at least in the short term. There is a need to leverage advanced analytics, social data, and sentiment analysis to recalibrate demand profiles and make relevant recommendations. For instance, Wipro’s Data Discovery Platform is helping companies do more with their data and get a deeper understanding of customer needs for hyper-personalization. Google and Apple are similarly providing mobility insights to track consumer behavior.
- .Technologies to enhance customer experience: While cost-cutting is underway in several companies, marketers cannot skimp on experience. Digital platforms can help them create better virtual experiences while AI/ML-based contact center solutions can improve the quality of customer support. An Adobe Digital Trends Report found that customer experience leaders are 4.5 times more likely than other companies to have a highly integrated, cloud-based technology stack. Wipro’s recent acquisition of Rational Interaction helps us use AI to engage with customers in more meaningful ways.
- Technologies to drive marketing performance: Campaign management tools, automation, 360-degree performance dashboards, project and workflow management tools, chatbots, etc. are all technology interventions that can make marketing more efficient and effective, driving optimal use of resources. Tools like Adobe Experience Manager, Marketo, and SalesForce CRM can help streamline content management and personalized campaigns and track their efficacy. Wipro’s Campaign-as-a-service enables our clients impact the customer at the right time in the buying journey by helping to conceptualize, create, and execute campaigns at scale. We’ve helped a Fortune 500 company reduce third party marketing expenses by 35% by creating a marketing Center of Excellence (CoE).
COVID-19 has forced organizations to re-look at the way they do business and go digital; and marketing is no exception. We will see increasing investment in marketing technologies as CMOs tighten the ship and focus on performance. Where do you see MarTech investments being focused? How are you planning to leverage MarTech in the post-COVID-19 world?
