Marketing has existed in some form or the other since humans started engaging in barter and commerce. Over centuries, it has evolved from word-of-mouth to hand-written to print and finally to the electronic and digital forms. At its heart, marketing is about fostering relationships with customers and being attuned to their needs, wants and motivations. The technology and the medium may change, but the success of marketing lies in predicting and forecasting customer actions and reactions.

Savvy and nimble marketing is an important part of a company’s strategy for success. A company can maximise returns on its marketing spending with a targeted marketing strategy. Unproductive use of resources — when marketing dollars are wasted on unproductive campaigns — has always been a problem for marketing teams. John Wanamaker, an American pioneer of marketing, said more than a century ago, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.

Spending resources well Just-in-time (JIT) marketing allows companies to make the best use of their marketing budgets, and extend the efficiencies to all aspects of their business. It is especially relevant in today’s digital and online marketplace where marketing cycles are very short and fast-paced. Consumers are spoilt for choice today when compared to even ten years ago; therefore the traditional marketing models must be updated or even expanded to accommodate and understand the digital customer.

In the traditional outbound approach, the marketing campaign is preconfigured to acquire customers for a predefined set of products and services. It often uses static demographic and geographic data which creates artificial segments, which are not a true indication of consumer behaviour or motivation. It is broadcast blindly across different media, with the hope of catching customers in its wide net. It doesn’t really take into account what the customer needs or wants. Customers are likely to tune out unwanted marketing messages or treat them as junk mail, the result being numerous lost opportunities.

In contrast, strategies built around JIT (or real-time) marketing focus on pulling in customers who are looking for their particular product or service. For example, a restaurant that crafts messages and campaigns for Zomato, a restaurant guide app, can be sure that it reaches the segment that is interested in dining out. The messages can be further individualised based on cuisine and type of meal, helping customers make an easy choice.

How a company engages with its customers is also an important element of this strategy. Online retailers such as Flipkart provide platforms for customers to make an informed choice.

Flipkart provides access to unmoderated ratings and reviews from other customers to help with decision-making. It also provides tools to ease the comparison and selection process between different brands and models. So the customer who is confused by the array of microwaves can narrow down choices by budget, functionality, wattage, and so on. Furthermore, customers can then compare their short-listed models by features, side by side, to finalise and click the ‘purchase’ button!

Data-led effort Rather than macro-level campaigns, JIT uses personalised interactions based on analytics and data gathered from multiple sources and collated to build a customised profile. For example, based on previous buying patterns and online searches, analytics may reveal that a particular customer is a new home-owner setting up a household. So JIT interaction may offer this customer deals or combination offers on household appliances and furnishings. Data is what makes JIT marketing possible.

When data is modelled by analytics, it gives marketing teams a clear picture of the customer they are talking to, instead of an anonymous profile. This allows the company to provide a unique and personalised customer experience, making it much more likely to culminate in a successful interaction. An extensive and versatile data set, therefore, is key, and companies have to build or source data using a variety of channels. Online and social media platforms, browser-generated data, transactional data and data from various devices and wearables are all combined to build nuanced profiles and predictions.

Retailers, for example, have been using technology to track customer movements to learn more about shopping patterns.

The use of beacon technology illustrates this; small Bluetooth devices are installed across stores and shopping areas. These beacons communicate with apps installed on customers’ phones as they walk across the shopping areas and tracking data can be combined with transactional data to guide the shopper in real time to certain sections of the store or alert them about offers relating to the department they are currently browsing.

Incorporating JIT techniques into more tried and tested marketing will provide companies the edge they need to attract and keep today’s tech-savvy and seasoned customers. Rather than build up an inventory of campaigns for a broad audience, marketing resources are better focused on data and building the ability to create real time and targeted campaigns and interactions which have a higher probability of a successful outcome.

Krishna Prasad is CEO, Co-Founder, Mobmerry

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