Rhea Patel is the CEO and Founder of CLIQ, a Mumbai and Ahmedabad based creative, brand-savvy digital marketing community. Since her childhood, Rhea’s parents and grandparents created an environment where Rhea’s talents were identified and fostered early, encouraged, facilitated support which in turn sustained her motivation. Rhea’s mother in particular imbibed the ‘Earning to Give’ spirit in Rhea which involved supporting her to pursue a high-earning career for the purpose of donating a significant portion of the earned income back to the society. Rhea strongly believes that we are all part of our communities and societies that contribute to who we are and what we can achieve. Today via her company she is able to offer a bouquet of 360-degree creative solutions to brands and businesses across the globe while ploughing back funds into creating a meaningful workplace and giving back to the larger society.
First of all, the fact that you have started reading this justifies that you are a working professional in the line of Marketing and Advertising, and this article will directly benefit you with knowledge and understanding of what the industry is looking at in the next few years of its functioning.
Now let’s look at this from a more holistic point of view. Holistic marketing is when the marketing strategies are formulated from a 360 degree standpoint, meaning that the strategies are devised after considering the whole business and its marketing channels in tandem with the smaller goals and objectives of the business. So by that logic, a holistic marketing approach makes up for a more long term route than a short term one. In the words of the Greek astrologer Aristotle – “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
Holistic marketing has 4 main pillars upon which it rests its standpoint, feasibility and effectivity. Let’s look at each one of them and see what they are all about. In respect to each of these pillars, let’s also try to connect them to the emerging trends in the media channels and strategies applied.
- Relationship Marketing –
Even the most secluded and introverted person buys a carton of milk from his/her trusted milk man, thus building up a relationship over time. Hence it is of utmost importance to know your consumers, target audience and read their pulse. Only then can your marketing strategy succeed with assurance. Begin with their habits, preferences, wants and desires, dreams, etc. and soon you will have the perfect marketing communication to back your strategy.
An emerging trend in this vertical has been the utilisation of location data to the T! Meaning that meta data with precision of pincodes are being used to target audiences with more accuracy. It’s called Hyperlocal marketing when back in 2017 Google identified a search trend of using ‘near me’ as a key word by worldwide users. It then integrated this keyword in their algorithm meant to be identified as an indicator for intent to purchase.
- Integrated Marketing –
An integrated marketing process happens when the organisation is efficiently utilising, conducting its functions and promoting itself throughout paid, earned and owned media.
- Paid Media are the marketing channels and communications that the company is directly paying for. E.g. ATL, BTL & TTL advertisements, pay-per click banners, etc.
- Earned media is termed as the earnings in kind that the company receives from its consumers in the form of reviews, ratings, testimonials, social media comments, shares and word of mouth publicity and promotion.
- Finally, Owned media is termed as any marketing channel or material which is directly owned by the company. E.g. A social media page or account, websites, events, webinars, social media posts, etc.
As a new development, we see that the value of likes, page views are being deemphasized and as such it will become a tough situation for marketing execs to come up with newer and more efficient metrics to calculate the worth of their media channels.
- Internal Marketing –
This is when the hierarchy is mentored to become representatives and faces of the organisation both individually and as a whole. A unified line of code, principles and communication is spilled on the outside world, mainly the targeted audience, so that the company performs as a giant entity in the eye of the customers. This not only generates goodwill, but also aims at gaining trust of the consumers.
Starbucks utilizes internal marketing strategies by always catering to a human connection while selling their coffee. Their baristas are well-trained to be people of warmth and affection.
Whenever you are at a Starbucks, you will be greeted with warmth and you will feel a good vibe of being associated with the brand. This builds customer loyalty. You will have your name on the cup of coffee too and while leaving with it, you will again be bid adieu as a gesture of warmth.
- Performance Marketing –
This translates to the repairing of investments as ROI and analysing the effectiveness of the performance of past or ongoing strategies applied by the company.
In this regard, time spent by users on any marketing communication or channel has emerged as an important metric. As an ideal reference of this type of strategy, Sleepy Owl came up with their series of Mute ads where a person having coffee was shown to be seemingly mute as she explained with honesty how much they had spent for this ad and how the company decided to mute her and instead have the coffee speak for itself and the brand.
Overall, marketing trends have evolved by a large margin in the last decade with the onset of the world wide web and then with the current digital revolution, we see how technology plays an integral role in marketing and advertising products and services even for short term objective actualisation. There is no denying the fact that we live in an age of information and data. So it is safe to say that when once, the saying ‘knowledge is key’ was regarded as the Bible, that phrase and saying should probably be updated to ‘Data is key’!
An ideal example of a holistic marketing approach can be seen in the marketing strategies devised by the Retail giant – Amazon when they introduced their ‘Pay Later’ facility.
Another such example can be drawn from Starbucks’ marketing strategies which owe to their rapid growth in the beverage industry.
A holistic and wholesome approach in life and in marketing will both result in a better world, where progress happens seamlessly and we can reach as close as possible to being in an ideal market. So here’s to all markers who will probably sit to strategize or are in the middle of it – Integrate a holistic marketing strategy and reap the benefits of an all-round marketing plan.