Technology has certainly transformed the marketing profession. Email newsletters, SMS messaging, search engine optimisation and even iPod marketing have all offered businesses new ways of reaching customers, and a recent small business advice survey conducted by the Chartered Institute of Marketing found that over three-quarters of marketing professionals believe such technology has made marketing a more effective discipline.Many marketing decisions that used to require human input can now be made by a computer programme. Markets can be segmented at the touch of a button and, even on the most complicated mailing list, a simple programme can easily separate the family with two children that aspires to buy a Volvo from the Lotus-driving singleton living alone.
Customer relationship management programmes that target customers who bought cans of cat food or cartons of cornflakes can be activated at the click of a mouse while companies such as easyJet set prices online using automated systems that ensure that the maximum number of tickets is sold for each flight.
Technology is enabling marketers to achieve what until recently was the work of science fiction. Some of the techniques that are now being used to identify and study human reactions to products and services are highly exact and the results they can deliver are breathtaking in their complexity.
Technical challenges
But just because they have the ability to target almost anyone at any time doesn‘t mean this is the right thing to do, from either a business or ethical stance. There‘s little point using technology to alert someone to your product if the potential customer only comes away feeling his or her privacy has been invaded.
Research suggests that the marketing profession is uncertain about how to cope with this issue. A small business advice survey by the Chartered Institute of Marketing in spring 2006 found that 56% of marketers believed technology was moving ahead of any consensus around the ethical and moral dilemmas that it can create. By the autumn of last year that figure had crept up by a significant 7%.
Technology can also stifle rather than aid progress. By using technology-based research to match products to customer demand, business owners and those thinking of starting a business can tweak and refine their offerings. Items will be slightly better than they were before but businesses will rarely make quantum leaps in innovation without human intervention.
Technology-based research can tell you who, what and when. But it can rarely tell you why. A business owner may be able to see that customers are going elsewhere by looking at a spreadsheet but to understand why they are leaving they have to get on the telephone and ask them. There are times when there is no substitute for personal contact. Vodafone, for example, still uses traditional market research to assess the success of its marketing campaigns, and to find out more about customer behaviour such as why people move to other suppliers.
Marketers and those interested in the best ways of communicating with customers must learn to control technology rather than the other way around. Allowing number-crunching programmes to automate decisions, send mass communications and decide what the customer wants is both lazy and misguided. And harnessing the real power of marketing technology isn‘t necessarily about buying the newest software or introducing more sophisticated equipment. It‘s often simply a matter of using the technology that is already available more effectively.
Harnessing the power
The very best businesses understand that the basic rule of marketing should always apply, which is that everything it does must be driven by a genuine customer need. Some third-generation mobile phone providers continue to haemorrhage money because their emphasis on the glitz and glitter of technology isn‘t about creating a closer bond with customers. These companies are creating new technologies and then try to get customers to buy them.
As with all good marketing, the technology should respond to what the customer wants. The BBC, for example, treats technology more sensibly by offering services such as downloadable comedy and news that can be accessed while on the move.
Marketers must use technology to add extra colour to what they already do. The most successful organisations of tomorrow will harness technology to make marketing more personalised. They will use it to release themselves from mundane tasks and spend more time on better meeting the needs of their customers. They will understand the importance of real relationships and know when the human touch is required.
Honda, for example, is developing interactive platforms where buyers can speak to an adviser without the hassle of visiting a dealership. In this virtual showroom, customers can chat to a technician, look at different colours and ’test drive‘ the vehicles that take their fancy. This service allows customers to get to know a product without obligation and adds real business value.
Similarly, the AA is using technology so customers can avoid the frustrations of a call centre. Following a breakdown, it now sends automatic SMS updates to stranded customers letting them know when the mechanic is 15 minutes away. At Amazon, technology has been used to bring distant purchases further forward. Its suggestions for further reading and a facility to create wish lists are totally automated but they allow the customer to feel a part of a close community.
In all the above cases, technology is not replacing a direct and personal relationship with a customer but is enhancing it.
Small business owners and those thinking of starting a business would do well to remember that technology can be a valuable marketing tool but it is not the end of marketing life as we know it.
Geoff Hurst is marketing director at the Chartered Institute of Marketing
