Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The New, Digital Normal





Aniko DeLaney
Managing Director
Global Head of Corporate Marketing

BNY Mellon


 



Personalized and faster markets are changing the way marketers connect with audiences and account for the individual needs of their clients. This new dynamic
makes marketing a more people-oriented profession.

 

Marketers get it — they’re clients too

Marketers understand the importance of a consistent marketing experience because they are clients too.

If a web site or app doesn’t load, people move on. If the content is hard to understand, people stop reading. If the logo on the webpage doesn’t match the logo on the billing statement, people get confused. If the price of items added to people’s shopping carts doesn’t reflect what they saw on an ad or another website, people don’t buy — in fact, they’ll probably complain.

And this doesn’t just apply to B2C clients. It applies to B2B clients as well. The difference is that B2B clients are buying on behalf of an organization instead of for themselves. But make no mistake: B2B clients still want a well-tuned user experience – in some cases even more so because the financial stakes are higher.
 

Growing a business requires a marketing experience that is personalized, mobile, integrated and fast. But getting to this point isn’t easy and requires huge shifts in an organization’s marketing structure and internal processes.
 

Who’s driving?

It used to be that organizations drove marketing through a linear process. Marketers ran a specific campaign, decided how clients would learn about it, and then controlled their experience.


No more! Thanks to social media, the clients themselves now drive campaigns. Their online experience shapes our messaging. Their online product reviews have as much influence as ours. Above all, their online experience feels to them more like human to human interaction than linear marketing ever did.
 

Digital departments are the best assets
 

So, organizations need a great digital team that can quickly address all digital media that clients use. This team should track four competencies: social media, content strategy, user experience, and digital analytics. The team leader will integrate these skills closely with the needs of clients. That will happen with constant client in-put through surveys, social listening and user experience testing.

To get to this structure, a Chief Marketing Officer and his/her team must work with key leaders within an organization to (1) review the whole prospect-to-client journey, (2) document all the steps from first contact to sale to return visits, and (3) define all the key media touch-points along the way. 


Finally, by building out a robust digital marketing department, organizations are able to make integrated marketing approaches a top-of-mind topic for staff. Once the mind-set of staff is changed, culture and changed behaviors quickly follow.
To prepare for this shift, a good high performance department has to have the processes in place to allow staff to react quickly to new ideas and improve the digital experience in-step with client feedback. By incorporating clear policies and procedures, staff can be agile and quickly respond.


The dawn of H2H marketing


It can’t be stressed enough: Marketing today has to feel like a conversation – not business to business, or business to consumer, but human to human.


Clients must not see marketers or the organizations they represent as cold and insensitive. Digital intelligence will always help segment audiences and target marketing. But success in the new paradigm requires the whole digital team to bring a very human touch to every step of the prospect to client journey.
 

So, what does the future look like?

Marketing is moving toward a more personal connection with clients. The marketing aims are to build brand loyalty and to offer value through a customized experience. A future that looks like this has a better chance to succeed in our new, digital normal.


Aniko DeLaney is the Global Head of Corporate Marketing for BNY Mellon with $28.3 trillion in assets under custody/administration and $1.65 trillion in assets under management. She is responsible for leading the team that develops the global marketing strategy, which focuses on brand/advertising, thought leadership and digital marketing activities. 

She is also the Marketing Director for the Markets Group, which includes securities finance, foreign exchange, collateral management and capital markets.  She leads global teams that develop strategic marketing plans with a focus on thought leadership and digital marketing.