Yes, it\u2019s that time again. Marketing professionals and pundits are predicting the next big trends in marketing<\/a> and how we can use the latest technology to enhance the art of engaging with current and potential customers. A cursory reading of articles and posts reveals a central theme to these predictions: data<\/i><\/b>. The future of marketing, they say, is all about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and big data. Or perhaps it\u2019s about voice search or mobile geo-location. Or maybe it\u2019s about the data we need to drive augmented reality or even virtual reality!<\/p>\n<\/div> Meanwhile, marketing and advertising directors must deal with practical issues like ensuring their multichannel campaigns<\/a> are consistent, on-message, and on budget. Of course, data of all kinds are critical to plans for the future, but before we can go there, we must adequately manage the actual data we have right now.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div> During the past few decades, we have witnessed the exponential growth of business information made available to marketing and advertising professionals. In theory, it\u2019s possible to know the cost, price, date of purchase, size, color, and SKU number of a t-shirt purchased in Buffalo, along with who the buyer was and how they felt about their purchase afterward. In theory, we can also derive meaningful trend data from millions of other t-shirt purchases that will inform and improve our brand promotion efforts.<\/p>\n In practice, however, that sea of product and purchase data<\/a> is complicated to manage in meaningful ways. It is especially difficult to respond to customer demands for rapid responses. Web and mobile technology have conditioned us to demand instant gratification in all aspects of our lives\u2014particularly when it comes to shopping. A promotion for a product that doesn\u2019t have a \u201cbuy now\u201d button or its equivalent will fare worse than one that makes buying easier. So, it\u2019s vital to integrate all<\/em> product data throughout the entire<\/em> promotion-to-purchase cycle.<\/p>\n<\/div> Not only must data facilitate immediate purchasing decisions, but it must also be accurate and consistent across the many channels available today. Not to mention the multiple versions of each flyer, webpage, or app screen, customized at the regional, demographic, or even individual level, as we described in a previous article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div> Because every retail operation is different, integrating multiple, often legacy data sources is challenging. So is creating a marketing production workflow<\/a> that serves all channels equally and eliminates redundant steps. The first step is to identify the isolated \u2018silos\u2019 of information made out of necessity – and often without anticipating changes in data and publishing technology.<\/p>\n<\/div> A typical example is the retailer\u2019s product information management (PIM) system<\/a>. While powerful in many respects, a PIM is subject to the data quality (or lack thereof) of information supplied by product manufacturers. For example, products may or may not have uniform SKU numbers and other key fields, and one manufacturer\u2019s way of labeling a product\u2019s attributes may be completely different from another\u2019s\u2014or it may be missing fields altogether. Cleaning up PIM and related data is a tedious task, so always look for a system integrator who can automate the process wherever possible.<\/p>\n<\/div> The same problem exists with digital asset management (DAM) systems<\/a> and other data sources. But even when the data is \u201ccleaned up,\u201d they need to be compatible with the retailer\u2019s PIM system and ultimately with the workflow that keeps all the multichannel campaigns running smoothly<\/a>. System integration on this level requires a working knowledge of the systems\u2019 APIs and a strong commitment to Agile software development.<\/p>\n<\/div> Finally, having all that data in an orderly, interconnected framework is only the beginning. It is only useful if all those data sources are smoothly connected to marketing decision-makers, designers, and technicians who create the campaign outputs. As described in a previous article<\/a>, Comosoft\u2019s LAGO system allows marketing and product line managers to plan multichannel campaigns<\/a> using current data and send it to designers. Then, those designers apply their visual talents to the project without the burden of searching for details and without risking errors from manual tasks. The resulting publications can be easily segmented into regional or demographically segmented versions<\/a>, and the consequential design decisions can be used to populate ongoing web or mobile app campaigns.<\/p>\n<\/div> LAGO\u2019s integration with existing systems preserves a company\u2019s prior investments and provides a true, multichannel production workflow, including feedback to the marketing and advertising planners.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div> In May 2022, digital marketing blogger Azeem Adam noted several trends to watch<\/a> in the coming months. They include increased reliance on performance metrics and the increased need to utilize AI chatbots and big data in general. Above all, however, he pointed out the need to have the right data at the right time in response to consumers\u2019 increased demand for immediate responses. Of course, all this depends on a retailer\u2019s having that data in the first place – in a form that can be readily available on demand. LAGO streamlines this process for the designer<\/a>. Even when a product image or other data is updated, the designer automatically gets the new version in the layout. But the \u201cinstant gratification\u201d does not stop there. Links to the product\u2019s ordering page can be automatically included in the web or app versions, and ordering-specific QR Codes can be automatically included in the printed catalog or flyer.<\/p>\n Marketing\u2019s abundance of data can seem like a crushing burden in the age of high consumer expectations. But with the right tools and intelligence to put them all together, data is our ticket to the future.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The future of marketing, they say, is all about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and big data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[57,34,51,47,43,59,39,42,38,62,56,40,53,58,29,37,36,30,44,48],"class_list":["post-3050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-catalog-automation","tag-catalogs","tag-circular-ad-layouts","tag-collaboration","tag-collaborative-workflow","tag-commercial-printing","tag-dam-system","tag-database-publishing","tag-digital-asset-management","tag-digital-marketing","tag-digital-publishing","tag-lago","tag-marketing-automation","tag-marketing-production-automation","tag-multichannel-marketing","tag-pim-system","tag-product-information-management","tag-publishing","tag-retailer-catalogs","tag-versioning-optimization"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3050"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3592,"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050\/revisions\/3592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comosoft.us\/lat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Data, Data Everywhere<\/h3><\/div>
Taking the Right Steps<\/h3><\/div>
Preparing for the Future<\/h3><\/div>