Ai Editorial: Marketer being a technologist is fine, but how to excel?

First published, 6^th May 2016

Ai Editorial: While optimizing digital spend, every marketer needs to remember that technology is extremely important but it’s only a key facilitator; not a driver of digital transformation, writes Ai’s Ritesh Gupta

The journey of a brand creating an aura of desirability to interspersing the booking funnel with apt messages and offers to eventually enticing a customer to transact repeatedly is riddled with a series of challenges never experienced before. 

One disappointment at any touchpoint and the customer can desert this journey.

So in a marketer’s parlance, every penny be it for crafting superlative content, messages/ ads, offers etc, optimizing ad spend for a healthy mix of brand awareness and performance marketing, setting up a digital infrastructure for a unified view of a customer etc. needs to be accounted for.

And is all of this enough?

Not really.

I remember interacting with a senior marketing executive from ClubMed North America in 2013.

His perspective on the role of a CMO is still vivid: “(my role is divided in following ways) 30% around analytics–related subjects, 30% for IT-oriented discussion, 30% to manage the marketing mix and 10% as “internal politician” for the change management in the company linked to the overall transformation!” 

Today the task entails capturing that perfect the blend of data, analytics, algorithms, content and screen (chosen by the customer) at any given point of time. 

No wonder every marketer has to be a technologist.

Challenges that never existing before

The benchmark for delighting a customer has touched unprecedented levels, with everything being talked about in real-time. Here are some aspects that need to be addressed:

-       Addressing individual needs - In the era of personalisation, one has to be spot on with the timing of message, the stage of the booking funnel, location, behavior pattern, context etc. So if a particular FFP member uses his company desktop for a particular pattern of travel and his mobile app for a completely different one, then it is vital to evaluate context based on data. Singapore-based Frank Bornemann, Head of Marketing, Loyalty Programs and Provider Management APAC, Lufthansa German Airlines says the industry at large is falling short when it comes to “personalisation to individual needs”. He says airlines have so much data available to address individual needs, but yet they usually blast offers to all customers in newsletters, apps, social media etc.       

-       Going overboard and spoiling the experience - Bornemann also referred to the danger of information overkill while attempting to be customer-centric. It is very easy to blast everything to everybody, but respect for our customers’ time is crucial to break through the communication clutter and build trust, he said.

-       Dealing with time consuming, uncertain areas - It is of course very challenging to merge all data points, apply the right algorithms and have the right text and visual components come together to create a seamless flow of information to customers. Also, today airlines are struggling to cope up with the tendency of shopping on several avenues such as PC site, mobile site and app. Definitely not easy to coalesce unidentified visits that initiate on desktop, mobile web, or the app, and then unify them post log ins.

-       Ad tech developments – In the world of programmatic buying and real-time bidding everything happens at a scorching pace as each bid request can be processed in under 100 milliseconds. Buying media programmatically is not the hard part, but buying it at the right price and optimizing it efficiently is where most novice ad buyers fail.  For instance, a U. S.-based ad tech specialist might be do an excellent job in their territory, but the same might not be enough to run programmatic ads in China. The plumbing required for China is very different, the programmatic networks are different. As I learnt from Criteo, owing to the powerful firewall in China, time out and missing of data may occur when displaying ads in China. So this can have a negative impact on any campaign, considering the real-time, dynamic nature of this medium.

-       Coming to grips with power of Google, Facebook, PayPal etc. – If I land up on Google, and am being given an opportunity to wrap up my booking with airlines in a Google-hosted domain, airlines need to pave way for such booking environment. Google can stitch unstructured behavioral data like social posts or searches together, providing context and determining intent. This data helps shape the audiences for its advertising network. So are airlines are at risk of being positioned as “just logistics providers?” So yes, airlines need to find ways to provide more value-added services when searching, and reasons for travellers to book with them, but they also need to partner with Google and others to be a part of a customer’s shopping experience.

Prioritizing expenditure

It is an arduous task to remain afloat and not miss out on any technological advancement. Everything needs to be timely, and rolled out in a way that it becomes a part of a customer’s journey with a brand.

Of course, airlines shouldn’t miss out on leveraging their own assets. For instance, as highlighted during Ai’s recently held Ancillary Merchandising Conference in Barcelona, there should be consistency in airline content, be it for airline-owned channel or 3rd party distribution. Irony is that content exists, but the industry struggles to show the same in the transaction flow. If an airline invests in improving the quality of the food it serves, and if doesn’t show during the flight shopping process, then airlines are not fully leveraging its product.

Also, when I asked how airlines need to prioritize their digital expenditure to ensure a top notch travel experience can be offered, Paul Byrne, Senior Vice President of Development at OpenJaw Technologies, referred to the significance of sticking to “basics”.

“I agree that it’s extremely challenging for airlines (or any retailer) to keep pace with all the new technological evolutions. But do they really need to? Airlines are not technology providers. They are service providers,” highlighted Byrne.

He said airlines need to follow a customer-centric approach rather than a technology/ solution-centric one. Byrne recommended few steps, underlining the significance of “back to the basics” –

·          Research your market(s) and customer base extensively. Get business insights from the data you already have and try to understand how technology is disrupting your markets. 

·          Identify the low hanging fruits and the long term initiatives needed to provide a rich customer experience.

·          Most probably you would have enough information at this stage to start planning how the latest technologies could be used to exploit identified market growth opportunities.

·          Prioritising your digital spend and aligning KPIs becomes a much more manageable task at this stage.

“The key point is that it’s more important to keep pace with your market and customer base than to run after the technological advancements. Digital transformation needs a user (and market)-centric design thinking and execution strategy. Technology is extremely important but it’s a key facilitator; not a driver of digital transformation,” explained Byrne.

Importantly, airlines should be focused on their customers and making the customer experience as seamless and painless as possible. “A great customer experience will create customer stickiness, loyalty and increase lifetime share of wallet. A recent Forbes survey showed that top airline executives believe customer experience is the primary brand focus,” shared Byrne. He highlighted that customer expectations are set by other industries; technology is the enabler for customer experience ; however, lack of (investment in) technology is the biggest obstacle to achieving this goal.

Follow Ai on Twitter: @Ai_Connects_Us