In this week’s episode of SMACTalk (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud), Brian Fanzo and I discuss the growing importance that tools and technology are playing in the world of marketing. With Brian heading off to Social Shake Up, the annual Social Media Today event in Atlanta, we started pondering the biggest challenges that enterprises and business are having with marketing and as it turns out we firmly believe it comes down to this one thing:
Marketing historically has been a very unscientific profession. There certainly is science behind the subject as a whole, but for many companies marketing came down to a lot of trial and error. This was certainly the case before social media, digital and data became so prevalent. However, with this emergence of information and data, marketers can no longer get away with just operating on feel. We have hit a point where marketing has to be done with proper tools AND proper goals.
In this podcast we discuss how the hospitality industry has done a great job of leading this trend with their use of social data. Brands like Marriott now use social listening to make sure that brand sentiment is positive, complaints are responded to and VIP’s are given memorable experiences that they can choose to share with their communities. Brian even shares an anecdotal experience of his arrival in Atlanta…
“After showing up first thing in the morning, hours before the hotel was supposed to give me a room, I was outside Periscoping and I mentioned that the hotel didn’t have a room ready (not complaining). During my live stream the hotel entered into the conversation and thanked me for my patience and it wasn’t long after that the room was ready.”
Brian’s story was a great example of how social listening and engagement can be used as a tool to create better marketing and better customer experiences. Just consider how we are now sharing this story as earned media and how it may positively impact the brand?
However, this goes far beyond just hospitality. The need to use data and information to create better programs for marketing between brands and their consumers is critical in every industry. In the future companies aren’t going to invest in anything they cannot measure. So for marketing technologists it comes down to using tools and technology to build trust and results in their marketing efforts.
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