3 reasons why marketing automation will not save your brand

Marketing automation surely is the most talked about marketing topic since five years. Google Trends shows an impressive growth in searches for the term, at least quadrupled. The topic only got hotter with AI making marketing automation even more effective. 

But is there tangible proof of long term effectiveness? Should we blindly go with the flow like fish to the sea?

Please consider 3 reasons why you should re-consider.

1. Automation comes in waves of sky high promises every 30 years.

In his brilliant book Narrative Economics, 2013 Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller exhibits a graph showing how automation has seen growing ánd declining public interest going back to the Second World War. Automation comes back every 30 years in waves spanning 7-10 years. Google offers this link to see for yourself: https://bit.ly/38zVS1Z. To know it all, please buy Shiller’s wonderful book.

Shiller shows how trending narratives about automation initially drive people to jump on the automation train. Ultimately a downward cycle starts with inherently human fears of technology replacing people’s jobs -founded or not- and with automation not fulfilling its initial promise. For some reason sky high automation promises are never fully delivered.

For some reason sky high automation promises are never fully delivered.

An example of how people eventually push back out of fears for automation is AdBlockers. In an advanced digital market as The Netherlands, 70% of internet users have put up AdBlockers to keep out (automated) digital ads. Globally the number is 47% and growing. This may be the end of digital retargeting. Automation is a strong technology promise, although not entirely delivered to the extent that technologically is possible.

2. Automation tooling never is unique to your brand, thus does not differentiate in the long term.

At best automation tools, however smart they have become, give a temporary competitive advantage. Once your competitor has seen his numbers drop, an automation tool vendor or agency flies in to fix the gap.

Don’t get me wrong. The competitive upward cycle of new tools is a good thing for a sector as a whole. It’s very good for the economy. It’s often good for the consumer (more relevant messaging for instance). It’s not good for your brand and business in the long term, if you bet everything on it.

It’s not good for your brand and business in the long term, if you bet everything on it.

It will most certainly not save your brand from digital pure players silently disrupting your sector. It's just hard to fight the facts: the data mountain on which pure players sit, the quality of their tooling and the learning curve across geo markets in building effective marketing automation campaigns.

3. Deep consumer insights drive consistent and long term brand and business development.

A value proposition where people are willing to pay for, more than for your competitors, is not built with automating your marketing messaging. It’s built on insights why your consumer ar buying your product and how your brand is bringing more value than others. Before spending money and months of management time on implementing tools, you might invest in deeply understanding your consumer. It may be your spend with the highest ROI of the year.

Data science definitely has contributed to a more scientific way of doing marketing. Nevertheless, messages sent in an automated flow may be completely irrelevant, demotivating or even annoying to a consumer. So, imagine marketing automation is sending messages that áre relevant, motivating and entertaining.

So, imagine marketing automation is sending messages that áre relevant, motivating and entertaining.

The good news is that the science of understanding consumer motivations to buy a product has evolved in the same way. In the past 10 years neuroscience and behavioral economics have become a scientific discipline in their own right. Since Daniel Kahneman’s aha-erlebnis that people’s thinking and behavior is full of biases and irrational motivations, we all learned that people simply aren't rational.

Although not rational, human beings still think and behave in patterns we can understand. These are patterns that humans share across territories and cultures. Methods, not all too complex, exist today to find out the implicit (or unconscious) purchase motivations of your potential customer. How strange it may seem and how well we believe we know ourselves, the fundamental purchase motivations are very much unconscious to the person buying a product.

How strange it may seem and how well we believe we know ourselves, the fundamental purchase motivations are very much unconscious to the person buying a product.

Here is real value and differentiation to be found for your brand and business. The kind of value that will build your brand in the long term. The kind of value that doesn’t depend on a tool or an algorithm to build your business.

Long term successful brands hold that deep insight -that eternal gem- and have consistently built the brand by evoking the insight in every single brand message, image and experience.

Nike is about fulfilling your full potential, beer brands like Jupiler are about male bonding, Apple is about thinking differently, Coke is about sharing happiness, Google is about organizing your world of information.

What’s those few things that make your customer buy your brand?

What’s your eternal gem?

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#consumerinsights

#behavioraleconomics

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#valueproposition

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