Time to read: 5 Minutes

We kicked off the Martech Magnified 2018 Conference with an awesome presentation from Mike Lukich of Total Wine & More, who had some insightful things to say about tech from a B2C perspective. Talking about tech from a conceptual perspective is one thing, but when it comes to figuring out how to apply the latest and greatest in MarTech to our actual problem areas, well, sometimes things can get a little complicated.  Really, the focus should be on identifying the actual problem and how technology helps.  It’s the first step to solving B2C marketing problems with technology.

So, at its heart, Mike’s advice came down to this: have a thorough understanding of the problem, and then choose the tech accordingly.

Use Technology To Be Better Marketers

There are tons of benefits to using tech — or rather, using the right tech. A formidable stack should be able to make your life easier in the following ways:

• Increasing scalability in business growth
• Higher productivity
• Automating and improving certain processes
• Collection of insights and data
• Reducing cost

On its face, it seems simple enough – til you consider the constantly evolving MarTech landscape. New technologies seem to pop up quicker than Tribbles.  In almost every way, the MarTech scene is an endless fountain of trends. So what’s the problem?

Pick the Most Appropriate MarTech Tool

Too often, Mike said, companies get distracted by new tech. Call it “Shiny Toy Syndrome”: picking the trendiest tech over the most appropriate. This can mean constant upgrading, or it can take the form of a total marketing overhaul. Either way, it’s the prioritizing of flashiness over usefulness.

This cool new technology might dazzle the senses, but how likely is it to fix your company’s marketing woes? Is it really the best fit for your company’s needs? To answer these questions, you should first have a solid understanding of where the problems lie. What are the specific issues? Among other things, some major contenders include:

• Segmentation: identifying like customers
• Brand problem: technology rarely solves these problems
• Personalization: driving content by using key characteristics
• Differentiation: convincing customers to pick your brand

Make New Friends, But Keep The Old

So, we diagnosed the problem areas. Now we can start looking at some possible options:

• Segmentation: A.I., micro-segmentation and process automation tools
• Personalization: cloud computing
• Differentiation: mobile tech integration aimed at improving CX

Chances are, you’ve got the solutions to these problems ready and waiting in your trusty MarTech stack. So, don’t just dismiss a new tech. Instead, just pick what works for you – whether it’s shiny or not.

B2C Is All About the Customer

As you know, customer experience is the lifeblood of B2C success. You can have the coolest tools in the world, but if you don’t fully understand what you’re building, and it does not help you connect with customers, then you might as well stick to alphabet blocks.

So, do the fruits of your stack’s labor improve the customer’s in-store experience? Do they help to streamline the check-out process, personalize the shopping trip, suggest products, manage transactional history? If your technology isn’t making some kind of impact on improving the customer’s journey from start to finish to return, you may want to take another look at what it’s bringing to the table.

Summing Up Solving B2C Marketing Problems With Technology

When it comes to solving B2C marketing problems with technology, the possible tech solutions will outnumber the issues ten to one, guaranteed. That’s why we were so psyched to have Mike present us with a straightforward approach to the problem of choosing tech: build up from a thorough and honest understanding of the issues, and select the tech accordingly.

It’s already complicated enough to devise the perfect strategy. Sometimes, the solutions are pretty simple.

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