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Consumer Trends and Insights

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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Keep pace with a changing environment

In today’s landscape, consumers want to interact with content dramatically differently than they ever did before. Their attention spans are actually dramatically getting lower, and also, the need for personalization is always increasing. In fact, as Seth Godin says, “It’s not about e-mail. It’s about me-mail.”

Some major trends are taking place in this area:

  • All-around global connectivity: This extends into the marketing realm. So, for instance, global retailing is a massive area. No matter where in the world you are, you can get access to a variety of sales, and services, and products at the tip of your fingers through digital means.
  • Use of mobile: Even in developing markets, the real growth area is the amount of mobile penetration that’s taking place. This is creating unprecedented opportunities for both organizations as well as consumers to access a global marketplace. The need to ensure that products and services are truly tailored to the needs of your consumer is becoming more critical than ever before.

    Drive for personalization: Ensure when you’re developing your understanding on consumer trends and insights, that you use a variety of global trend reports to be able to determine some of the key things, particularly in the marketplaces that you’re interested in.

Social listening

One of the great ways to really understand your customers in a very unbiased and robust way is that through social listening. In essence, it’s a relatively new way of thinking about your customers and getting core insights in an unobtrusive way, and can lead to real, unbiased results.

Social listening is the process of identifying and assessing what is being said about a company, individual, product, or brand on the internet.

Benefits

First, you can listen in to consumers in a non-obtrusive way. So hearing consumers talk and chatter online enables you to gain insights about how they’re feeling, thinking, and behaving about your product.

Second, if you can hear your consumers talk about your product, you can do exactly the same with competitors – both getting a sense of how consumers perceive your competitors, but as well as how competitors are engaging with consumers in his way. It enables you to gain greater insights into what they may be doing and their future strategies.
 
Third, it enables you to gain new insights and ideas about new products and services as a consequence to what your consumers may be talking about. So, for instance, your consumer might make great suggestions about exactly what they want to see more of in your product, and you can then adapt that by gaining those insights. You can also understand new, upcoming needs which would help greatly as part of the new product development process.
Fourth, you need to constantly iterate your product, adapting it to make sure that it’s always meeting your changing consumer requirements, so you can tailor your product to do just that.

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Richie Mehta

Ritchie Mehta has had an eight-year corporate career with a number of leading organizations such as HSBC, RBS, and Direct Line Group. He then went on setting up a number of businesses.

Data protection regulations affect almost all aspects of digital marketing. Therefore, DMI has produced a short course on GDPR for all of our students. If you wish to learn more about GDPR, you can do so here:

DMI Short Course: GDPR

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ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE

Digital Communications
Richie Mehta
Skills Expert

This module begins by covering the benefits and challenges associated with digital communications and the importance of researching and selecting the most appropriate digital channels to reach and engage with your target audience. It covers the tools and digital PR activities you can use to extend your reach on social media, content management, the factors to consider when creating a budget for a digital campaign, resourcing a digital team, and the importance of aligning digital metrics with customer service metrics to review the performance of a digital campaign.