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I think the technology will prove its worth in the very near future, will have to wait a little bit further until the tech goes viral
"The Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.”
Twenty years ago, modern marketing had its Big Bang with the birth of the web. Like the real Big Bang, the early years had a lot of hot gas. Consultants prognosticated how it would transform business. The buzzword of the day was “disintermediation. ” A dot-com bubble grew. True, some industries were quickly disrupted. Goodbye, Yellow Pages. But most businesses continued to operate largely as they had before the web. Maybe with a few tweaks around the edges. But in recent years, as the gasses have cooled and new constellations have sprung to life, a fundamental change in business has emerged. It has taken two decades, but the web has finally fulfilled its promise of massive disruption. What was disrupted? Marketing.
How the jester became the king
Marketing used to be on the periphery of most businesses. Outside of a few major consumer brands and the cult of advertising agencies in New York, marketing wasn’t where the action was. It was mocked as “the arts and crafts department.” The web changed that by giving unprecedented power to customers. Companies used to have an asymmetrical information advantage over most customers. They could dictate the sales process. They could spin public relations. They could rest assured that high “search costs” would dissuade most buyers from hunting around for better options. But the web, as it matured, completely demolished that advantage with a knockout, one-two punch. Punch one: search engines. Anyone could publish anything, effectively for free, and search engines made it findable by everyone in a matter of seconds. Open information exploded. Punch two: social media. We became connected to each other through social networks, able to instantly share information with peers across a multitude of virtual communities. Open communication exploded. Suddenly, the tables were turned. Buyers could now learn an incredible amount about sellers — and not just from the sellers themselves. They could tap colleagues, influencers, competitors, and — most powerfully — other customers. In turn, they could also feed their experiences and opinions back into the web. These explosions in information and communication were revolutionary. They put mega corporations at the mercy of mommy bloggers. But that is only half the equation. What drove people to praise or punish companies online? More than anything, the experiences they had with those companies. And where were those experiences happening? Increasingly, on the web. Or in apps. Or via other digital touchpoints. Today, people don’t just visit websites to absorb information. They go to interact with functional applications. Sometimes apps are ancillary, such as a mortgage calculator. Other times, they are a key part of the product or service, such as online banking. For a growing number of companies, the online application is the business — Amazon, Netflix, LinkedIn, and thousands of software-as-a-service (SaaS) ventures. People judge your company by the quality of these experiences. If you want a great brand, you need to deliver great experiences at every stage along the customer cycle — from the very first touch point onward. Customer experience, more than ever, is your brand.6 These three forces — open information, open communications, and customer experience — coalesced into the perfect storm. Super storm Internet. And it’s the marketing department who ended up right in the center of it. Figuring out how to harness the awesome power of that storm, rather than being battered about by it, is a daunting responsibility. But it has elevated marketing to the very top of the organizational pyramid. Peter F. Drucker famously said, “Business has only two functions — innovation and marketing.” Marketing is now ready to claim that mantle.
Marketing as a technical discipline
Behind the scenes, a quieter but equally profound revolution occurred. As marketing was taking over the business, technology was taking over marketing. This caught many by surprise — not just in marketing, but in IT and the rest of the C-suite too. The “front-office” of marketing — its interface with customers — used to be things like advertisements, brochures, direct mail, and trade show booths. Today, it includes a dizzying array of digital touch points across websites, social networks, and mobile devices. And they’re not just static marketing pieces. They are the conduits of customer experience. The “back-office” of marketing — its internal operations — used to be no more complex than Excel spreadsheets and a mailing database. Today, it includes CRM, content management, marketing automation, predictive analytics, testing and optimization tools, data management platforms, and a multitude of custom and cloud-based applications and databases. Within a decade or so, marketing went from being one of the least tech-dependent business functions to being one of the most. At first, most marketing departments kept the technology flooding into their work at arms length. They relied on the IT department or agencies to build their websites. But as their technical needs multiplied, this soon became a bottleneck. More importantly, without a native understanding of the technology, marketing was limited in how deeply it could absorb it into its strategy and tactics. Into this vacuum, in between the worlds of marketing and IT, a new kind of hybrid marketing professional emerged: the marketing technologist. Marketing technologists have technical skills and inclinations, but they are drawn to marketing. Superstorm Internet fascinates them. And they intuitively see how software and data can harness its power to propel a new generation of marketing. In digital agencies, they’re called creative technologists. In web start-ups, especially in Silicon Valley, they’re known as growth hackers. Those who specialize in mining and manipulating data, especially big data, are data scientists. In some companies, they’re considered marketing operations.7 Their job titles and skill sets vary tremendously. But they have one thing in common: they don’t think of marketing and technology as separate disciplines. To them, technology is simply the clay from which modern marketing is sculpted. Marketing technologists have fundamentally changed the capabilities of the marketing department. They’ve cured it of blind codependency on IT and external service providers. They’ve helped integrate technology into the bones of its strategy and tactics. They’ve made marketing tech-savvy.
Management and culture in this new wave of marketing
intersection of marketing and technology proves massive influx of technology and technical talent is impacting the strategy, management, and culture of marketing. I shortened the name to chiefmartec.com. Not only was it easier to type, but I thought of “martec” (marketing technology) as equally important as “marcom” (marketing communications) to the future of marketing. Readership of chiefmartec.com has grown to thousands of marketers around the world — from hands-on marketing technologists to global CMOs. It’s been incredibly exciting to watch this topic blossom, and I am immensely grateful for all the support from that community. My goal in writing this was to distill the best of what I’ve learned about the intersection of marketing and technology into a more cohesive, bigpicture story. I wanted a short, little book that anyone could pick up and get a really good feel for this amazing transformation of marketing into a technology-powered discipline. By understanding how these different meta-trends work — at least at a high level — I believe that you will be more effective in navigating your organization through this stormy sea of disruption. Even more, I believe you can harness the raw power of these storms to your advantage.
As software developers say, “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” I hope this new brand of marketing inspires you.
augmented reality is new technology and i agree with you it is too early for it to replace the traditional tools
For the banking sector, to solve customer’s pain point or end up their frustration due to the poor banking experience is not a run-of-the-mill job. Instead, rapid adoption of groundbreaking technology, Augmented Reality has helped in eliminating this cornerstone and its integration across various services allowed the customer to use services in a blink of eye.
Augmented reality is a diverse technology that enhances and improves the view of real world by overlaying 3D view of the surrounding over 2D object, every time you project the app-enabled smart phone over it.
The niche technology has marked remarkable difference in the banking sector with web and mobile applications. Old aged methods are not efficient to get more user engagement and derive effective results. In that case, astounding banking solutions through augmented reality can redefine banking and reveal a glimpse of untapped potential across boundaries.
Enable banking customers to do 90% of the activity on digital device.
Use of mobile phones is tightly integrated in our daily lives and same holds true for the use of credit & debit cards. Integration of augmented reality in the mobile app lets the user to view their account information just by holding their card in front of their smart phone’s camera.
Westpac, an Australian bank use this technology to build an app that gives incredible experience to the customers. App display balances, transaction history, spend locations and how the money was spent, in 3D bar charts after projecting the app enabled camera over card.
Other than this, it summarizes loyalty points, marks the number of days remaining to pay the bill and allows instant payment as well.
Use Case: Augmented Reality into everyday bankingThe traditional approach of going through the job vacancy ads in the classified section of the newspaper and then applying for it will soon fly away. As, AR apps revolutionize the standard hiring process of workforce by letting prospects to scan the brochure of the organization in the form of 3D video with any digital device.
ASB bank based in New Zealand has unveiled this 3D augmented reality app known as ‘Work for ASB’ recruitment app that help in recruiting banking talent via future recruitment campaigns. Also, enlist the tips for the job aspirants for interview, CV and let candidates share their recruitment experience on different social media channels.
Use Case: Augmented Reality technology used to help recruit banking talentIn the last few years, banks have been engaged in technology arms race to engineer such apps that made the banking process handy and comfort the customer. Augmented reality solutions deliver the seamless solutions that completely transform the way services offered to the customer and also, provide an exceptional opportunity to the banks to stand out from the crowd.
As you know that in augmented reality the technology functions by enhancing one's current perception or reality. The main issue is the trust factor and adaptation of technology and yes in this part of the world it will take some time.
