Technology is coupled with a lot of Digital Marketing elements, be it reaching out to newer audience, interacting with them at varied levels, understanding search patterns or mapping consumer behaviour. Cloud is playing a huge role in integrating technology with simple business models and enabling us to get better insights.
There’s a tool/app for everything that you require, schedulers, content planners, content curators, tools for analytics, measuring sentiments and a whole gamut of others that enable better efficiency. Forecasts by CISCO, Forbes and Gartner estimate one third of the digital content to be stored on cloud by 2016.
Cloud based software or SaaS come with many advantages. Here are 5 ways in which cloud hosted SaaS is changing digital marketing.
Automation – Automation has been a boon to digital marketers. It takes over the banal tasks, reduces scope for error and eases efforts. Hubspot, Infusionsoft, Buffer, Act-on, Hootsuite and many more of such software have reduced the level of complexity when it comes to scheduling and data analytics. Be it automation of emails, social media tasks or analytics – there is an automation software for every need.
Personalization – The key to success for any digital marketing initiative is increased engagement and interaction. Personalized strategies to suit the requirements of clients and customers equally are the core. Marketo, Oracle Eloqua are some of the tools that help personalize for relevant and targeted audiences.
Cost – Budget continues to be a crucial aspect for any business (in many cases THE most important aspect!). Most of the tools and applications offer a free trial period, there is no better way to test the tool which suits your needs the most than this. Once you have found the best match, you can subscribe to them at a minimal cost. Many tools such as Google AdWords, Social Mention, Ice Rocket etc. are also free of cost!
Consumer Sentiments – Tracking consumer sentiments can be a daunting task when done manually. Tools such as SDL and TargetingMantra can digitally help separate true sentiments from the noise. Right from the time the consumer enters your site/app to the time the service is availed (or not) can be tracked and documented. The insights that such tools provide are invaluable.
Secure data – Content is one the most important aspects of digital marketing. With SaaS and the cloud technology, losing data due to hardware crashes is reduced by 100%. Zscaler, SilverSky, Qualys are some of the cloud based tools used to secure data networks. Also, with more companies entering the market, the levels of security with respect to safeguarding data has increased significantly.
Cloud hosted SaaS has already created ripples in the digital marketing space. If we go by Forrester’s research, by 2020 digital marketing will only be done with cloud hosted SaaS.
