With the introduction of AI, especially Generative AI, the complexity of marketing strategy has gone more bitter than ever before. Now, a marketing officer even having a better choice to streamline its marketing and advertising campaign yet is not sure to choose which Generative AI tool fit for its specific campaign requirement. Recurring cost of Generative AI tools is another puzzle for him to meet its KPI goals within prescribed budget limitations. Generative AI is a step to simplify and speedily accomplish a marketing process. It is necessary to understand a holistic marketing strategy to reach prospects and audience that are smart phone savvy widely surf and spend time on social media and OTT platforms.
Overall, for a marketer the communication approach can be broadly divided into two parts:-
A.) Direct Marketing B.) Digital Marketing
Direct Marketing
The term non-existent before the internet was more in vogue when advertising, promotion and marketing were used to done through print and telecommunication. Print based direct mailers or cold calling was more in fashion to communicate audience at the initial level of promotion. It further extends to TV ads, Newspaper ADs, Brochures, Catalogs, Flyers, Folders, Packaging, Events & Expo and PR. Even the marketing efforts based upon audience size and budget are further divided into two major categories ATL (Above the Line), and BTL (Below the Line) marketing.
Digital Marketing
A term most popular among present generation marketers to reach their audiences busy on smartphones and desktop computers. They have different means to outreach them and promote a product or service. In digital marketing they can sell directly if it is an e-commerce site or do lead generation exercises mostly for B2B promotions. However, the most popular digital marketing activities carried out by a digital marketer are E-mail Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization, SMO (Social Media Optimization) and Paid Marketing (Google, Meta, Linkedin and other marketing platform)
Whether it be Digital Marketing or Direct Marketing there are some common areas for both.
- Audience
So you have a product or service to offer, yet, in doubt who to sell it. The entire marketing activities begins with accumulation of audience or consumer data to target. In direct marketing prospect data is being collected through business directory, yellow pages, events & expos, business cards, telecommunication and data mining. Whereas, in the area of digital marketing, the audience in terms of reach is any person that visits your website is a prospect. It is technically more refined as lead and the activity to collect that prospect data is termed is lead generation. The foremost method to collect prospect data is cookies, the next one is different types of query forms and tracking codes. The data collected by this way is extensively used in paid marketing for re-marketing activities. Data from checkout, subscriber data, social media login data, mail service providers like gmail, outlook express and others comes under it. The data gathered this way is used for later stages of marketing are reached to offer services. The common fields for audience data now-days are first name, last name, phone no, city, state, county and pine.
- Message
Now, having an audience information in database, you are now pondering over an exclusive offer or message to send to a customer to receive an instant response. The role of branding and advertising comes into picture at this stage. The copy, graphics, product offer, imagery and most importantly brand positioning plays a pivotal role here. Your message depending upon type of marketing could be a leaflet, social media post, paid marketing creative, newspapers or any other forms depending upon your preference and marketing budget.
- Proliferation of Message (Media Buying)
After a perfect message, it is time to deliver the messages at different POS (Point of Sales) where an audience can view it and take an action on it depending upon the business goal. The primary objective of message is to communicate or sell. This delivery of message is termed as media buying. Contrary to digital marketing along with paid there is a concept of organic growth that is used for generating leads and business.
For direct marketing direct flyers, hoardings, newspaper ads and inserts, TV ads, business magazines, trade association journals are the platforms to reach out the audience with the help of databases existing within an organization.
In the area of digital marketing same database is used for sending creatives and e-mailers to the audience. In paid marketing, there are two types of data, one is platform ecosystem data like Google, Meta Ads, and other type is re-marketing data collected from websites and other sources.
Content Marketing
Your all marketing efforts are vain unless you don’t include content marketing within your marketing strategy. It is primarily can be assumed as PR and Knowledge Base that you create about your brand and further proliferate within your industry or in the field of your business operations. Its most common formats are press releases, blogs and vlogs. It helps to build a favorable positioning of your brand among masses.
In addition there are new segments has been added to the marketing since the advent of digital as medium of mass communication. The areas are:-
- 360 degree marketing (Omnichannel Marketing): Omnichannel marketing primarily derived from a common database of services serving across different communication platforms. An eCommerce site selling online, mobile and in-store is an example of Omnichannel marketing. Using API driven SAS, an Omnichannel as well as multichannel marketing works together.
- Automation: Automation is another important aspect of marketing that is pacing up fast. Under it, a campaign is optimized by using automating processes to minimize human intervention for customer support and other allied tasks.
- Generative AI: Latest entrant into marketing arena is Generative AI where supervised learning tools like ChatGPT, Text, Image and Video generators are used to speed up marketing process for different activities.
Thus, in present times, a marketing communication strategy can be streamed from audience estimation to message delivery to attain the respective business goals.
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