Grant Lapping
DIGITAL transformation remains top of the agenda for most brands and agencies in South Africa. However, even though organisations understand the burning urgency of becoming digital-first, achieving this is proving to be more complex and time-consuming than most anticipated when they started the journey 15 or 20 years ago.
There are some companies that have made strides in the right direction. However, most brands and agencies have yet to achieve a seamless experience in their digital marketing practices. This is largely because brands and their digital agencies haven’t built up the technology and data skill-sets needed alongside their strong creative capabilities to drive successful marketing in the digital age.
Data advancements
In years gone by, marketing was about creative thinking and using intuition to generate innovative ideas that would position a brand or product in a way that resonates with consumers. While brands could use tools such as focus groups and quantitative surveys to ideate ahead of a campaign or to measure success after a campaign, they didn’t have access to real-time data or the volumes of information available today.
The end-user data harvested on programmatic search and social media platforms, along with the first-party data brands collect via their own digital platforms, gives us rich information about customers’ needs, preferences, behaviour and context. Modern artificial intelligence tools and machine learning algorithms make it possible to generate actionable insights from the data.
Brands can use these insights to create personalised messages for each customer to improve customer engagement, retention and conversion. The data allows brands to focus their marketing spend on the customers they are most likely to convert - vastly improving efficiency and ROI. The insights also enable brands to optimise their campaigns in real time to improve performance.
Competency integration
However, to do all of this, a brand’s marketing team needs to have the technical skills to correctly configure programmatic platforms and internal systems such as CRM applications; while agencies need deep technical skills in the application of programming interfaces such as server-side tracking.
Just a few of the technical proficiencies that have become important in this environment include effective attribution modelling, correct structuring and setting up of Google Analytics, real-time reporting dashboards, cloud computing as well as integration of first-party data into ad platforms.
Digital agencies that don’t have these skills risk falling behind in an environment where clients are seeking full-service offerings. At this juncture for many brands, technology skills are the missing piece. Great creative strategies are executed by talented teams, but this expertise exists across most established South African ad agencies. However, digital technology is evolving fast and skills are hard to find.
Either way, these two competencies require different types of people for successful execution. This is why we have seen so many mergers of creative agencies with management and technology consultancies that have established technical skills bases. The ultimate goal is to deliver integrated services that combine creativity with technological sophistication.
* Lapping is the digital executive at +OneX