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Several major trends are emerging that will shape the marketing industry, says Michael Laps, Co-Founder & Strategy Director at Yoghurt Digital. Most companies are planning to build efficiencies and change strategies - without increasing their marketing budget - and having a meaningful, in-depth understanding of your customers is crucial, he adds. 

Yoghurt Digital is a sponsor company at the marcus evans CMO Summit 2021.

How has COVID affected the development and implementation of digital strategies?

The global events of the last 12 months have presented the business world with unprecedented challenges. With levels of uncertainty reaching previously unimaginable heights, building and executing a digital marketing strategy wasn’t always the major priority - survival was.

Since the dust has settled, we’ve noticed several major trends that will shape the marketing industry for the next two to three years. As physical stores have closed and businesses have been forced online, the enormous increase in competition has been reflected in the cost of running paid ads across Google, Bing and the major social networking platforms. It’s now more expensive than ever to acquire a customer using paid digital channels. Secondly, given the increase in competition online and the associated increase in costs for top-of-funnel marketing, there has been a major shift in focus to bottom-of-funnel marketing - mostly in the form of conversion optimisation strategies and UX/UI design projects.

And finally, many companies are no longer looking to continue increasing their marketing budgets annually, but are instead looking to build efficiencies with their existing budget by being more deliberate about how they spend it and what they spend it on.

With the advent of so many new digital marketing channels, the traditional marketing funnel has changed. What is the best way to build a truly integrated, highly targeted digital marketing strategy?

Building an integrated, highly targeted strategy comes from having an in-depth understanding of your customers. Beyond basic demographic information, you need psychographics. At the very least you need to know their values, what’s important to them, what motivates them to seek out your product or service, the unique selling points that matter to them the most, and their major pain points. You need to know what friction points they are experiencing throughout the entire user journey to conversion, and what digital channels they use in the research, comparison and conversion stages of the funnel.

Having answers to these questions will give you a better understanding of where to put your time and effort. The core pillars of any digital strategy still usually fall under one of the umbrellas of SEO and content, biddable media, UX and conversion optimisation, and email marketing. But knowing when to use each channel, how to integrate them amongst each other, and how to tie them into traditional marketing initiatives (e.g. TV, radio) all comes back to knowing your end consumer in meaningful detail.

Given data is more prevalent but also more precious than ever, what are the best ways to capture, analyse and leverage your customer data when developing your digital strategy?

An in-depth UX research project is still the most effective way to really get to know your end consumers. When done properly, UX research should include both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis.

This involves analysing everything from your website analytics, through to customer surveys, in-person interviews with current and prospective customers, tracking of consumer behaviour on your website, user journey mapping, and plenty more.

Once you’ve captured and analysed all of the data, you can extract critical insights to build a data-driven website optimisation program. But beyond that, you can also use that data to inform your strategic decision-making across all of your other channels (both digital and traditional), as well as the broader business itself.

What does the future of digital marketing look like? What are the trends to be aware of?

While there has already been a flurry of technological developments that are having a profound effect on the world of digital marketing, there are plenty more that are still either in the works, or evolving.

The major areas to look out for over the next few years are voice search, artificial intelligence, automation, personalisation, wearable technology, and the death of cookie-based marketing.

Many businesses will find that the makeup of their internal teams and the skills they value within their organisation will change rapidly and noticeably over the next few years as these technologies become more advanced, more autonomous, and more affordable.