Just as most organizations have finally gotten on board with using advanced analytics to guide digital marketing strategy, research has found that the most effective marketing still relies on good old-fashioned human insight.
The findings are on display in advertising research firm WARC's new Effective Innovation Report, drawn from the winners of the Effective Innovation category of this year's international WARC Awards, which highlights the world's most successful digital marketing efforts.
"Following our analysis of the winning entries, we see that there's a shift away from marketing via algorithm toward real human insights that can power effective communications, as well as desirable products and services for consumers that offer genuine convenience and solve problems," Lucy Aitken, WARC's managing editor for case studies, said in a statement.
Here are three trends common among the most effective innovators in digital marketing, according to the report:
1. Real human insights: Rather than relying on objective analytics, organizations must understand the culture and values of their audience and consumers, and embed that into both their marketing strategy and the goods and services they offer.
2. Personalization: Organizations already know the power of tailoring communications to each consumer, but the most effective strategies are finding increasingly creative ways to reach consumers "beyond the screen" and better demonstrate how a company can fit seamlessly into their lives.
3. Voice: Marketing may now be shaped less by faceless algorithms than by human-driven insights, but there is still plenty of room for advanced technology in an organization's strategy, and especially for conversational artificial intelligence that allows a consumer to remotely interact with an organization using only their voice.
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