Earlier this year, Digital Nation held its ‘Digital as Usual’ breakfast event for HR, finance and marketing. The event combined C-suite level players to discuss how the digital tools have shaped each department.
This chapter focused on the way technology is helping evolve the marketing industry across Australia.
With technology able to offer more data insights, marketing departments are now able to enhance the experience and gain deeper levels of understanding into customer behaviours.
As digital innovation rises across the ecommerce space, many senior marketers have found the industry must instinctively adapt to new tools in the sector.
Airtree’s senior marketing manager Bree Fedele said her career in marketing has seen her develop well-rounded skillset of digital tools.
“I’ve gone from a marketing niche to what I would describe as more of a ‘Swiss army knife’ marketer.
“Constraints breed creativity and I’ve had to find ways to do a lot of things with very little resources, so tech and digital tools play a big role in me being able to achieve this.”
Designing layouts used to be one such constraint however, as digital tools become increasingly accessible Fedele said she “uses Canva nearly every second day”.
“Another one would be audio and visual content which we know is so important if your audience is on LinkedIn or TikToK,” she said.
“But five or so years ago to create a podcast, there was huge barriers to being able to start, whereas these days you just need a subscription and you can record, edit, produce in your own episodes to a very high standard.
“It’s funny because back in the day when you would read a marketing job description, you were essentially looking for a unicorn if you need someone to do all these things. Whereas these days any savvy digital marketer can probably try their hand at these things themselves,” Fedele said.
Targets and goals
Adore Beauty Group chief marketing officer Dan Ferguson added that technology and digital tools have proven to be beneficial in helping achieve his targets.
“Technology has been an enabler of getting my message to more people. Technology has been the creative experiences that support the marketing messages that I have promoted or distributed across the nation,” he said.
According to Ferguson, digital tools and new marketing capabilities can lead to bold moves.
“I love those new tools. I love the ability for me to understand, what works as a marketer and because that means we can be more courageous.
“We’ve got courage to invest money in channels, that to date were probably under invested in,” he said.
He added while some marketing spaces, such as TV, radio or long form content, require different skill sets, each have an individual reach “and they can carry an emotional message”.
“That’s inspiring as a marketer, rather than doing an ad that will create an instant click and a conversion to buy- you’re saying, how I do an ad that makes people walk away smiling, feeling like they had they laugh … we know that doing that will drive traffic, it will drive interest and will actually drive commercial benefit,” Ferguson said.
Emerging tech still finding footing
While most marketing leaders see clear benefits of digital tools, Princess Cruises head of marketing Chloe Jones said there is still some resistance to emerging technologies, such as generative AI.
“Generative AI is the latest tech that’s informing and assisting with a lot of our decisions, not necessarily decision making, but content creation.
“There’s just still this resistance to generative AI that I haven’t seen in other new technological solutions because it’s just so unknown.
“We are slowly looking at how we can use generative AI to help our existing content creation or creative development rather than it replacing anyone in particular,” she said.
Jones added use of the capabilities will be more tailored towards how to “make things simpler” and help personalise its customer journey.
Digital was always “the next evolution”
Norths Collective’s chief marketing and innovation officer Robert Lopez has long seen the marketing space becoming more technology enabled.
Adding computer science to his marketing education during university Lopez said “the future was going to rely heavily on tech” and “marketing as a discipline really has had no choice but to adapt to change in the digital realm”.
“We as marketers have to be where our customers are at all times and that over time has changed.”
Lopez explained his role has both adapted and changed to new mindsets to keep pace of where customers are.
“I really think my role has had to adapt to that change and my mindset has had to change over the years to really understand who our customers are, but where our customers are plus social media, digital channels.
“That really is where 80 percent of our marketing budget goes now, because that is where we can also deliver ROI,” Lopez said.
Adopting technology has to create “efficiencies at the most basic level, to the incredible new opportunities we had as marketers to share our message, in a more targeted and meaningful way,” Kate Parker, marketing director for Australasia at Morningstar added.
“When I started out, roles were more siloed. Some people worked in events, others would work in content development and others (the digital marketers) did all the EDMs, or what we savvy era 2000 marketers called HTMLs,” Parker said.
“Over the years the roles converged and as someone who was not originally involved in using tech I had to quickly become comfortable at being uncomfortable and using new skills.”
Now in a leadership role, Parker said she has introduced “incredible experts into my team” while becoming “comfortable at the fact that I do not knowing everything”.
“By that I mean, the digital world is revolving so quickly, and I am ok at not being an expert at it all – in my mind that does not exist – what does exist is hiring incredible specialists and giving them the room to “own” that skill in an organisation – and from that we all grow.”
Moving forward, Parker sees technology “as the next evolution” and doesn’t believe it will have a negative impact.
“When I was sending faxes and receiving internal envelopes from other business groups, I could not imagine 2024 (and having a computer not stuck at my permanent desk)
“Much can be said for this change. Just be open to something new, and be willing again to get uncomfortable… I am!”.