the territory we are operating in. That is
the only way to maintain relevance at the
market place. In a fast paced world we are
faced with a situation where competition
is often coming from non-traditional
sources. Retail chains dominance is
challenged by online retailers, fixed
line telephony by mobile and mobile by
skype/online. The following are some of
the evidence of the challengers of the
marketing profession.
Digital Marketing by ICT
Professionals
They say that nowadays you have to be
online one way or another. Any serious
business has to be online on various
platforms including social media. A 2016
study put Kenyan facebook users at over
5 million monthly with daily average
internet usage of 6 hours or more.
How do you engage with all these
consumers in social media and other
platforms? Who are the go to guys for this?
The answer is not the traditional marketing
guy but most likely an ICT professional or
an IT savvy marketing professional. Most
successful digital media strategies will be
executed and planned by non- marketing
professionals. Digital skills upgrade is
a must for the marketing professionals
without an option. Still a collabo with
ICT professionals can result to a win-win
situation for both professions.
Threats from Big Data and
Robotics
According to Bernard Marr a Forbes
Contributor among the 10 professional
jobs under threat from big data includes
marketing and advertising. Bernard states
that we shouldn’t feel safe when we hear
or read news stories about imminent
takeover of robots and algorithms that
will eliminate jobs for human workers;
this is normally associated with blue collar
jobs like factory workers and taxi drivers
as professional jobs are also at a threat of
being outsourced to computers.
He quotes Persado, a natural language
software firm, which has put its computers
to the task of writing compelling email
subject lines for large retail organizations
that can as much as double open rates.
He also states that companies are also
experimenting with automated ad buying:
instead of having people choose which
magazines to place ads in and on which
pages, the computers take care of it, using
billions of data points for reference. and even outside the organization will
definitely be a pre-requisite.
Collaborat