Increased complexity seems to be top of mind for marketers today with buzz and questions about digitalization, channel integration, Big Data, ROPO, phygital, and more.

All of us want to understand the latest technical evolutions and marketing tools, and use all the new data available to us. Eagerness to learn and evolve is a good thing, but the problem lies in wanting to do it all and being overwhelmed by a more integrated marketing reality where we can no longer separate different tools, channels and data. We still look too much from a bird perspective instead of submerging ourselves in the customer journey.

When you understand the customer journey, you will no longer be confused by the sheer amount of technology and data, it will give you direction and focus. In the end, the role of the marketer is to identify the customer decision-making process and respond with messages and tools that respond to it. Tools may change and become more complicated, but the basics stay the same. We need to be sensible and use marketing toolkits in an intelligent way; they are merely a means to an end.

Being focused on the customer journey will in turn improve insight into customer demands for relevance and authenticity. The era of pushing content through a number of channels is over. Sending off ad after ad with a pre-packaged message about products doesn’t cut it anymore. Marketing will revolve around relevant content and insights into what makes customers tick and click.