The Rise of the Connected Marketer

Recently, at the IAB Digital Summit 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Carmen Murray, Founder of Boo-Yah! spoke about the power of mobile for the connected marketer. Here’s are some key takeaways:

Mobile has Superpowers

It’s the enabler and the catalyst of change, it is the glue that binds everything together. If you look at the most constant thing in our lives it’s our mobile phones. We’re sitting on a 95% mobile penetration rate and 60% smartphone penetration, according to We Are Social.

Your Digital Transformation

You need a strategy,  you need optimization, measurement, tactics and time. All of these are very important for your digital transformation. I believe that through my many years of sitting with customers, and especially with marketers, we’re losing our way a bit. We are becoming obsessed with the new and we are overwhelmed by the pace and how quickly things are moving around us.

At the same time, we’re using tactics instead of strategy. We as marketers need to go back to the basics in order to get us future fitfor tomorrow’s realities.

The Rise of the Connected Marketer

It’s not anything new,  you probably should know this because it’s the underlying principles of marketing. The future marketer is going to be a conductor of Technology, creating seamless experiences, really a symphony of technology and experiences for our customers. This is going to be the future.  

What is a connected marketer?The more connected devices we have in our lives the more constantly connected we are. The more constant connection we have, the more we go into a state of connectedness and the more we are in a state of connectedness the more our behavior is changing. That is what we call the connected individual. They are attracted to connected brands and this leads to the rise of the connected marketer.

We’re living in the age of ubiquitous connectivity where we’re always constantly connected. This is the reality of what’s happening today. As devices inside the homes become more prevalent and we embrace IoT, the Internet of Things, this is a big drive for the connected marketer. As we go about our lives we switch seamlessly from our digital selves to the physical world that we live along with.

Call it what you want, the Internet of Things, the Internet of intelligence, the Internet of me or the internet of everything, but as IoT starts growing and advances and is evenly distributed, we are going to collect so much data.

Our Mobility is Changing the Way We Think and Act

The knowledge that you are living in a state of a constant connectivity is more important than the means of connection. It’s not about the technology,  it’s about the fact that you’re constantly connected as your digital self. If we look at our young generation, the younger the consumer the more digital connections they have. But we need to understand that there is no difference for them with physical and digital.

The smartest brands in the world know this to be true. It’s so true what Mark Pritchard said, “When 5 billion customers shift their habits, you shift with them.” When our behaviors change, we need to change with our customers.

Today, we have the ability to be a shopper, connected consumer, connected patient and connected passenger.

The Connected Marketer Meets the Needs of the Connected Individual

The most important thing to remember is that the connected marketer creates, develops and maintains a brand that understands and meets the needs of the connected individual and much more.

Three are four human dimensions of a connected marketer. They merge physical, digital, emotional, and sensorial brand experiences. The first one is building understanding. As marketers we know we need to build an understanding, but most of the businesses fail because they don’t understand their customers’ needs and what needs they need to fill.