How Digital Marketing is Changing in the Brand-Aggregation Era?

Marketing is so deeply embedded in our daily living that we have names of brands on our lips. 
People think of Starbucks when someone says coffee. Amazon comes to mind when we hear e-commerce. An internet search has already been replaced by “Googling.”
We can hold mind-boggling marketing strategies responsible for this! These powerful strategies are designed in a way that leaves a mark in our minds and brings a brand name at the top of the others whenever our preferential triggers are pressed. In the larger scheme of things, they work to change the face of the entire business. Take the famous apparel brand Net-A-Porter as an example.

The Porter Case Study

Net-A-Porter was launched in the early 2000s when marketing became essential to success. After arrival, the brand faced a big challenge in being unique and exclusive among thousands of brands that were present online. To beat the heat, they focused on meticulous monitoring of the market. Their market research suggested choosing either being an affordable brand or a luxury brand. Net-A-Porter realized they wanted to position themselves as a luxury brand, and thus they turned to omnichannel marketing. The company used several channels, including a mobile app, social media, email marketing, and retargeting cart abandoners. They prepared a social network called The Net Set. Through this app, users could interact, share pictures, and find out if their products were available nearby, thereby triggering sales. 

While other brands hired Ronaldo and Gaga for billboards and advertisements, Net-A-Porter directly aimed at their prospects. This resulted in extraordinary sales, and the credit for its $200m revenue goes to the personalized marketing strategies.
This case study is an exquisite example of what potential marketing holds. The concept is known to every 21st-century entrepreneur or SME owner, but how many follow through? How many have an idea of what their customers want? How many retain a cohort of loyal customers who do not bounce as per the offers in the market? 

All this depends on how well a brand communicates to people. For this, brand owners and marketers deeply need to understand its capabilities. They need to understand that the right marketing can make or break the product! Thus, here are some ways which illustrate the overall impact marketing brings to a company. 

Consumer Experience – Learn it from Amazon

Amazon has mastered a laser-like focus, unlike any other brand. It scans the behavior of its customers and serves up what they want. To do so, it collects a lot of user data. It is not a miracle that we see product ads on our Spotify, and we like them! Here, the brand follows an appealing formula. It monitors and initiates behaviorally targeted ads and product displays that lead to millions of customers being inclined to buy the products. A variety of marketing tactics like personalized emails, product suggestions, and retargeting are put into action.
What a brand owner can learn is how to assess customer behavior. For small or medium brands, this personalized strategy can do wonders. It can target those customers whom we label as cart abandoners. Such cart drop-off rates can be controlled by encouraging prospects to complete the purchase through retargeting and tailored emailers. Eventually, these will aid businesses to get hold of customers, boosting the revenue.

Select Target Audience and Develop Uniqueness with Apple

Apple thinks “Different.” It doesn’t strive to impress customers, but rather lets them fit into Apple’s worldview. A key reason is the marketing strategy of the brand, which does not revolve around treating customers with offers and giving discounts. Nevertheless, the firm focuses on a very unique chunk of shoppers who demand experience. Thus, the brand has developed its uniqueness and gained an advantage over its competitors. 
How close are other labels to doing this? Evidently none. Most brands focus heavily on advertising and targeting mass. Instead, if they could have accurately identified their target audience and spoken to them, it could have been a game-changer. It can set a label apart from its competitors and foster a sense of loyalty from customers, like the Apple brand. In the future, whether a business sells on Walmart or offline, loyal customers will follow them.

Marketing is Changing!

It has become increasingly apparent that marketing is far more than just promotions. The game is all about engagement, personalization, being around for help, and connecting to the preferences of consumers. If we look into the future, we will soon realize that the changing terms will force brands to upgrade their approach. Due to the barrage of communication in both digital and physical space, a brand’s struggle for eyeballs, repeat visits, considerations, and purchases couldn’t have turned truer than it’s today.

The biggies with deep pockets have the luxuries of experimenting, gathering information through primary research, and running expensive campaigns to talk to their customers. The pain points are particularly visible among potential newbies who are entering the space with limited resources, starting off in the online space and investing less by riding on the support system of online marketplaces.

Over there, every second label is competing hard to get their portion of their customers’ mindshare. These Net-A-Porter or Apple of tomorrow need a fillip to survive and grow. Individually, they may have limitations throttling their growth, but once aggregated they can collectively bring more to the table. As these smaller brands deal with products that easily appeal to Genz, I believe, the marketing strategies of these brands are to be dealt with more care.

Two factors change the entire story here. First, the collective roll-up of the labels under one brand, and second, the understanding of the generation they are targeting to. The dual-factor enforces brand aggregators to think about marketing a whole lot differently.

Now the plan revolves around identifying the strengths of each label, understanding the geography where they can thrive, knowing the audience like the back of the hand, and then building an environment for growth. It’s no longer about flashy advertisements or heavy endorsements. It’s more about placement, positioning, in-the-moment promotion, and living up to the promises.

The cardinal P’s of marketing has been used and followed extensively in the physical world, however, now the online brand promoters may need to look deep into those Ps again and devise an all-encompassing solution for the brands to come, see, and conquer.