Marketers planning shift to one-to-one

Almost half of marketing agencies view individual-level targeting as a must-have over the next 36 months according to a new survey. Alterian surveyed nearly 100 senior executives in 45 UK marketing agencies in May to discover that integrated marketing is also firmly on the roadmap.

“Traditional marketing campaigns took market research or group data and built programmes around many generalised traits and assumptions, but didn’t treat customers as individuals. Companies can spend huge amounts of money driving people to their website through search and Google Ads but, if the website does not then engage those people, the efforts and money spent are wasted. Today’s marketing relies on a two-way conversation,” says David Eldridge, CEO of Alterian.

Although three quarters of respondents said their clients were beginning to understand the value of customer engagement, opinion was divided on how this would happen. The Web was named by 65 per cent as the most important driver for change as customers use it to research, engage and transact. Just over one quarter (28 per cent) named social media as the main driver of change.

Eldridge says: “Customer engagement is the new marketing. Smart marketing service providers and agencies realise that and are using their close relationship with their client’s data to drive a move towards individualisation of communication and through this are much closer to achieving customer engagement.”