It’s tough being a marketer today. Consumers have a barrage of choices in front of them, leaving marketers scrambling to establish value, stand out and deliver.

According to global information, data and measurement company Nielsen’s Five Steps To Optimising Marketing Mix Strategies, marketers need ingenious ways to reach and increase brand appeal, and find their way into consumers’ shopping carts. With today’s cluttered media landscape and rapid advancements in technology, brands are finding themselves increasingly challenged to capture consumer mind share.

The irony of their position is that brands are advised on the efficacy of their media plans and campaigns by the very agencies who create them, which effectively defeats the purpose of independent return on investment (ROI) evaluation.

Technology is redefining what ‘go-to’ marketing means. Lines between the physical and digital worlds are blurring. Customers nowadays are growing accustomed to the benefits of digital in virtually every commercial setting and are beginning to expect them in their day-to-day transactions as well.

Director, Kantar Worldpanel, Alison Martin, in a post on the Warc website titled ‘The Uberisation of FMCG’, notes: “The idea that any device, from car keys to fridges, can be used for commerce – coupled with the proliferation of mobile wallets – has FMCG companies rethinking how they make money from selling goods online. Each with unique and pioneering ideas on how these benefits can be profitably delivered to consumers, service-based start-ups are fast disrupting the FMCG market.”

Dining, delivery, laundry and transportation firms are at the forefront of new business models that combine technology and demand: saving consumers time, money and – most importantly – hassle, he adds.

UBERISED MARKETING
The term ‘Uberisation’ derives from the phenomenon created by on-demand taxi-booking company Uber. It means disrupting the market by introducing a new way of conducting business. This is done through the use of a computing platform such as mobile to conduct transactions between customers and providers. From its meaning and concept, the major characteristics of ‘Uberisation’ can be defined as follows.

Utilisation of a digital platform: Uberised businesses essentially use a technological platform, such as a website or mobile app, to establish the peer-to-peer connection. Such companies are adopting digitised ways of connecting customers and developing their networks based on the Uber model.

Connecting service provider and customer: Uberisation cuts out the middleman from the scenario and bridges the gap between the customer and service provider or the brand. It helps in bringing both the parties together through an easy-to-use interface.

Online payments: Uberised companies use various payment gateways, including debit or credit cards, net banking and app wallets, to facilitate monetary transactions between the consumer and the provider.

Ratings and reviews: As in many other industries, the rating system has become common with Uberised businesses. In the case of Uber, the provider (the cab drivers) can also rate the customer. It creates a system where the users are able to judge the quality of a product or service by its ratings.

Reduced overheads: Since companies working on the Uber principle directly connect the provider to the customer, there is generally no requirement for physical offices and such. Most of the providers and clients use their digital interfaces to transact business without the need of face-to-face encounters. This results in reduced overheads for the companies and savings on their part.

MARKETING REINVENTED
But does a shared economy or ‘app-tisation’ of every service mean lesser value or relevance of marketers? Does it disrupt existing marketing businesses? The answer is both.

CEO of digital agency Prototype, Alexander Rauser, says: “Apps are just one channel and the job of any marketer is to understand their target audience and the channels that they can reach them on. There is not one channel that gives you 100 per cent coverage.”

Not everyone is on Facebook, not everyone uses apps and not everyone watches TV. The job of any marketer is to utilise the right channels most effectively in order to create the perfect marketing mix, he explains.

“The key to success,” he continues, “is not to focus on disruptive technologies, but to perfect your baseline digital offering. If you continuously improve the way you market online, you will automatically end up using the latest and thus disruptive technology. There is little point in jumping on a latest trend if your overall offering is lacking.”

However, because most products are available today on mobile apps, keeping customers well-informed, it does not mean that there is no need for marketers in today’s digital age. Nor does it mean that marketing as a strategy is losing relevance in the age of Uberisation and the shared economy. In fact, now is the more pressing need for marketers.

“Marketing as a practice is evolving and moving with the times, as with anything and everything that wants to stay relevant and survive and thrive. To prove this, marketing in the 1960s was a very different practice to that of the 1980s and the thing that facilitates and drives it today is the importance of data,” reasons managing director and founding partner, Active (Digital. Marketing. Communications), Louay Al-Samarrai.

“Data”, he says, “is a cornerstone of marketing today, but it’s NOT the be-all-and-end-all solution as people are involved – they are who we are marketing to and it still takes people to market to people. Using data and the tolls available today means we have a more effective and efficient source of input that’s more instant.”

He adds: “Relying on only one or two channels to consumers or key stakeholders is a risky approach to start with. Using the wrong language or tone is another and, lastly, maintaining [the customers’] engagement and interest through the various and varied channels is a priority. To make these things happen and function effectively – like in anything – you need professionals and that, in this case, means marketers.”

Marketing experts say that such shifts in platforms are not new. Over the past 20 years, businesses have transitioned from offline to online – first onto desktop sites, then mobile web and now apps.

The director of marketing at dubizzle – UAE, Nadia Zehni, says: “Changes in platform do not remove the need for marketers but simply change the role’s requirements. Each shift just comes with a new set of challenges and considerations for marketing in acquiring and communicating with users.”

By Gulf Marketing Review

She notes that some key areas where marketing is more relevant than ever are: communication, acquisition, and building brand and loyalty. Marketers, she adds, continue to play a crucial role in communicating with users through highly segmented, personalised, timely and relevant messaging. With user bases shifting primarily to mobile, most communication is now taking place via mobile devices, with push notifications overtaking SMS and email, and becoming the most engaging channel.

Also, she says, the need to reach large audiences remains, especially as thousands of new apps make it to the app store each day. Performance marketing is a proven channel for acquisition and engagement, and the growth of app advertising networks facilitates reaching new users at scale and relatively low cost.

“Marketers are storytellers. They continue to be instrumental in expressing the ‘why’ of a brand and being its voice in a crowded marketplace. Technology has evolved marketing from the ‘Mad Men’ era of offline advertising towards hyper-targeted, digestible snippets of content on social media or experimenting with new technologies like virtual reality,” Zehni says.

“In the case of dubizzle, our business is built on the foundations of shared economy. dubizzle enables anyone to find what they want or need at a fair market value and allows them to manage their households with the help of other honest individuals,” she maintains. “That said, marketing has always been instrumental in sharing dubizzle’s message of shared economy. The message remains the same; it has just been executed through different channels, as technologies and consumer behaviour have changed. One of the ways that marketing further promotes the shared economy is by making dubizzle’s extensive data available to help consumers.”

The CEO and founder of souqalmal.com, Ambareen Musa, notes: “Marketing a product is all about identifying who your customers are. Once you identify them, you go after them. The change that’s sweeping across the marketing industry today is that businesses are becoming more and more targeted.”

She adds that brands are becoming savvier about who their customers are. “They’re learning more and more about your past, about what you do, what your habits are, and what you like and don’t like. It’s about trying to target you as a person, but also on a mass scale,” she concludes.