At one time in the not-so-distant past, companies took a more sweeping approach to market their products — that meant putting their offerings in publications and other media that they believed best represented their target customers.

However, technology is quickly changing the marketing landscape and companies have to move fast to keep up, says Ashley Kretzschmar of Aledo, Texas, who has several years of sales and marketing experience in the pharmaceutical industry and is a thought leader liaison with Regeneron.

While traditional channels of reaching potential customers are still viable, there's more information available than ever thanks to electronic data analytics, meaning brands can better narrow their scope to reach their ideal audience.

Getting More Personal

Thanks to the wealth of information available through digital data collection, such as location of potential buyers and the kinds of keywords they're using to find products, companies can make the marketing experience more personalized, explains Ashley Kretzschmar.

Appropriately known as personalized marketing, technology has allowed marketers to reach clients with a unique message on a platform they're most likely to engage with. This not only includes sending offers that match an individual's interests based on previous searches, but can also customize website pages with products of interest featured front and center.

From Big Screen To Small Screen

Television has long been a vehicle for marketers, but statistics suggest that viewership (and ad spending) is on the decline as digital media captures more of the attention.

However, it's not as simple as switching marketing from a television screen to a computer monitor. People are increasingly turning to mobile devices (smartphone users are estimated to be at more than three billion in 2020) and that means designing ads that are optimized for smaller screens for both readability and response times.

Cultural Considerations

Digital technology allows marketers to cross borders and reach audiences that were never possible before through print or television, explains Ashley Kretzschmar.

This is an important consideration for companies, because broadband internet is becoming increasingly popular and affordable in third-world country markets and is growing rapidly in markets such as India and China.  

However, with the added reach comes the added need to understand cultures and what resonates with potential customers abroad. That goes beyond language barriers: marketers also need to tap into social perspectives and economic factors of the countries they're targeting. The end result is a range of marketing campaigns that are tailored to specific demographics around the world.

Ashley Kretzschmar on Breaking Through the Noise

With the amount of digital traffic on the rise, marketers may need to work harder than ever to stand out from their competition. That means using data analytics for better targeting, but there are also signs that many companies are increasing their digital marketing budgets to better deliver digital campaigns.

This also points to an increase in investment into new marketing technologies to stay on the cutting edge, says Ashley Kretzschmar.