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Looking Past the Hype of 3 Digital Marketing Buzzwords: SoLoMo, Big Data, and Omni-channel

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With the emergence of any buzzword, the hype can often overshadow the actual concept, but it’s essential to consider how a trend can positively influence your marketing initiatives. In the world of digital marketing, there are currently 3 buzzwords trending for marketers: SoMoLo, big data, and omni-channel. Each of these buzzwords holds a solution for improving digital marketing campaigns, but the challenge is seeing through the hype and determining how to harness that solution. Let’s explore:

SoLoMo

SoLoMo comLooking Past the Hype of 3 Digital Marketing Buzzwords: SoLoMo, Big Data, and Omni channel image Digital Marketing Buzzwords 1bines social, local, and mobile into digital marketing campaigns. By targeting all three aspects of SoLoMo, marketers have more widespread access to target audience behavior. SoLoMo tracks interaction on multiple channels (and devices) and allows marketers to push out contextually relevant content at the right time and location based on customer data.

Social: Tools such as Facebook’s Graph Search allow marketers to view customer actions and interests, including music listened to, videos watched, articles shared, and check-ins made. This information provides brands with intricate perspective on how to tailor real-time messages, offers, and content to individual customers and their current behaviors.

Mobile: Smartphone growth is increasing every day; in fact, 50% of U.S. citizens own a smartphone. As customers continue using mobile devices to access the Internet, social media, and search engines, brands must ensure their marketing initiatives are on pace with mobile user activity. Mobile users are “always on,” meaning that brands can consistently engage customers despite time or location.

Location: Location-based communications like Yelp and Groupon allow customers to access brands in their current vicinity and filter the results based on specific needs. By harnessing location-based services in digital marketing campaigns, brands can deliver messages and offers that are relevant to that location.

By understanding SoLoMo as a “relevance multiplier” for digital marketing campaigns rather than just a popular trend, marketers have the opportunity to distribute targeted content and further engage customers through the channels and locations where they are most active.

Big Data

Looking Past the Hype of 3 Digital Marketing Buzzwords: SoLoMo, Big Data, and Omni channel image Digital Marketing Buzzwords 2Big data is everywhere in the digital marketing landscape, encompassing everything from transactions to marketing communications, from channel interactions and behavior to customer preferences, and so on. The information gathered through big data can provide powerful insights for how to engage customers through real-time messaging and contextually relevant content. However, many marketers struggle to harness the power of big data because it poses such an intimidating expanse of data. Without a solution or specialist or strategy to decipher the data, there’s no use for it and opportunities for better customer engagement will be missed.

Leveraging customer insights is crucial for digital marketers but the clincher is getting big data to perform. Donald Hinman, Ph. D, aka “Dr. Data”, the SVP of Data Strategy at Epsilon Targeting, compared big data to potential and kinetic energy, “Data is like kinetic energy. When it is stored in the database (i.e. battery), it is only ‘potential’ energy – useless until accessed.”

The same is true with marketing campaigns; in order for customer insights to be valuable, they must be applied to the decision-making process and marketing actions. Once marketers harness the power of big data, it’s no longer just a buzzword; instead, it’s an opportunity to turn insight into action. In a previous post, my colleague Christophe Kuhner outlined a simple three-step methodology for the application of data and analytics in marketing. It’s a great resource for beginning to put big data to work.

Omni-channel

Looking Past the Hype of 3 Digital Marketing Buzzwords: SoLoMo, Big Data, and Omni channel image Digital Marketing Buzzwords 3A digital marketing campaign with an omni-channel approach puts the customer in control; the individual chooses which device, platform, or channel they wish to interact with and is guaranteed to get a consistent experience across each medium.

The term omni-channel refers to a shopping experience across retail and commerce sites. It is similar to the term “cross-channel marketing” in that it strives to create a seamless customer/audience experience across a wide range of channels and devices.

The benefit of an omni-channel approach is that it makes customers more knowledgeable and aware of a brand or product because they have constant access to it across mobile devices, PCs, brick-and-mortar locations, etc. For retailers or ecommerce sites, an omni-channel strategy can become more than a buzzword when it’s applied to deliver individually tailored customer experiences that increase customer loyalty and lifetime value.

Before marketers decide to integrate SoMoLo, big data, or omni-channel strategies into their digital marketing campaigns, they must first do their research. While each of these buzzwords has a legitimate value and purpose in improving customer experiences, they can’t be adequately executed without a thorough understanding of the concept itself—and the right strategy and tools to deliver on their promise. Don’t be fooled by the hype surrounding popular trends; be sure to truly understand what you’re working with before you incorporate any of the above buzzwords into your digital marketing efforts.


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