What does sitting down with your customers really means for marketing
QSR marketing chief explains the difference in digital marketing from five years ago.
Sitting down and having the customer tell you all about themselves and what they want from brands as opposed to tracking customers' online data is the biggest change in digital marketing, according to Loob Holdings Chief Marketing & Digital Officer Yau Chuan Ng.
In a quick interview with QSR Media, Yau Chuan, who will also be holding a special speaking session on driving R&D and customer experience using data and digital at the upcoming QSR Media Asia Deliverect Conference and Awards, said that this difference is ‘cooler’ because customers will not feel that they are just named in a long list.
QSR Media: What do you think are the important trends in digital marketing?
Yau Chuan: One of the most significant trends is the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in digital marketing. This includes using these technologies to analyze data, create personalized experiences, and improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This has already been in play with performance-based marketing platforms such as Google, Facebook, and TikTok – but these are mostly one-dimensional in optimizing for specific metrics like ROI.
I think where AI will really change the game is when we trust it enough to run many more nuanced facets of marketing practices. Imagine if AI crafted media publisher articles. Or instantly generated videos, images, key visuals, influencer posts, and whole campaigns with just one click. That would be the platform I invest my dollars into.
What differences can you compare today's digital marketing to five years ago?
One of the most important differences over the past five years is how we’re bringing value to our customers in a personalised way. With the rise of data privacy regulations such as the GDPR, brands now need to focus on alternative methods. It is no longer ‘cool’ to boast about how much you’re tracking your customer and what you know about them. It is much ‘cooler’ to know because they’re conversing with you. The key is to have that open community for conversation, so you as a customer are willingly telling a brand what you want from them. No one likes to feel they’re just a line item in your CRM getting a push notification because you’ve lapsed usage in the last 30 days.
Brands that I really look up to who truly know their customers and are hyper-focused on bringing personalised value are folks like Starbucks and Lego. Of course, they have great CRM initiatives, but they don’t forget to have open communities for conversation.
What are you planning to touch upon in your talks on Data and Digital to drive R&D Excellence and Customer Experience?
In my talks on data and digital, I plan to highlight the importance of leveraging data to drive both R&D excellence and customer experience. This includes using data and analytics to gain insights into customer behaviour and preferences, which can be used to inform product development and marketing strategies.
I’ll also highlight how we’re using digital platforms like TikTok to grow our marketing team from 10 to 4,000 and provide a whole new, authentic brand experience to customers.
How do you see digital marketing evolving in the next five years?
With AI, in five years, maybe all of us in this room will be out of a job. Jokes aside. With the advent of AI and Machine Learning, a lot of tasks which are important but highly specialised will become much easier to do with AI. Copywriting, video storyboarding, writing briefs, pulling consumer research trends, and making slides. It will free us all up to focus on broader topics of strategy and priorities. We will have to. Because essentially, any question you can ask, any task you can think of, will be done by an AI. So everyone will become extremely good at asking the right questions. And isn’t that what good strategy is about?
So in the world of five years from now, the digital marketers who ask the best questions will run the best campaigns at unbeatable efficiency and speed to market.
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Catch Yau Chuan and the rest of the industry leaders at the upcoming QSR Media Asia Deliverect Conference & Awards 2023 this 27 April in Singapore. For more details please visit this link.
