About five years or so ago, a snapshot of a typical marketing team consisted of the company’s internal marketing group, a PR/creative agency and a communications team. However, today that snapshot has drastically changed. And understanding these changes is essential to any business owner, whether you run a startup or a more mature company. But why? It’s due in part to two key factors.

• An overwhelming amount of information is now available to customers on the Internet and social media sites.
• The tools have changed. Technology-based marketing programs i.e. marketing automation now puts tremendous capabilities into marketers hands.

Information overload and your customer

The overwhelming amount of information that has become available on the Internet has dramatically changed how customers make buying decisions in the past five years. Your customer, or potential customer, is no longer a passive individual with long attention spans. They are highly informed, have very limited time and are more aware of the innumerable options available to them. They are being blasted daily by social media, mobile ads, e-mails, tweets, posts and shares, and have more options now than ever before.

Consumers visit social channels for entertainment, to get information, to get a comprehension of posted information, and to socialize. So, simply plugging a brand or product into social channels is not going to be effective. Just plugging in is actually the number-one reason for social marketing failure. Too many marketers’ efforts fail to recognize the vital importance of posting content that people actually care about. They also fail to recognize that consumers conduct their research in many locations and that multiple forms of content are needed to more fully communicate your key messages.

New marketing tools

According to chiefmartec.com, the marketing technology offerings in 2011 were only about 100. However, in 2012 that increased to over 350 and took a giant leap in 2014, to over 950 marketing options available. Marketing is evolving so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up. Every marketer has a whole new learning curve to incur. Not only do you have to be market savvy, but you also need to be more technical. This change isn’t only affecting the marketing professional. The technology professional also has to learn to wear a marketing hat.

What these new marketing technology tools provide to marketers is how to truly understand your customers’ likes and dislikes, learn where your customer hangs out, determine what offer to give them and on what device. And if they are not ready to buy, you nurture them along the path until they are.

This is a true switch from traditional mass marketing campaigns that pushed out general promotional brand messaging to the masses. Now, the focus is on mass individualization or, in other words, content marketing which pulls customers to your content and products.

So, what is content marketing?

The definition according to the Content Marketing Institute is: “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action. It is a marketing strategy an approach that uses content to deepen our relationship with customers.”

A good content marketing strategy now gives marketers the opportunity to build a one-on-one relationship with their mass customer base. Demographic segmentation is no longer the crucial piece to targeting. Instead, it is behavioral segmentation which involves building a real persona of your customer. With this approach, it is more important to focus on what you do than on who you are. It is more important to know what websites your customers visit, what e-mails they open, what events or stores they go to, and what they tweet and share.

Shift in marketing tactics

In this fast-paced environment, you are probably asking yourself, “How should my marketing efforts shift?”

• Be creative in your marketing don’t only focus on words. You need to utilize other tools such as video to communicate with your customers.
• Conduct more market research be aware of all channels, all cutting edge developments in social media and how they can affect you and your startup.
• Produce good quality, educational content that customers want. Hire more technically based marketers or partner with freelance or outside consultants that can fill your technical or writing needs.
• Develop a social media focus be transparent in your company and within the organization. Technology is not only IT. Have a flexible and entrepreneurial approach to your marketing; try everything and stick to what works.

What hasn’t changed?

In the past 100 years the one thing that has stayed constant is you must have a distinctive selling opportunity. This is truer now than ever. With all the noise your customer has to weed through, you need to be meaningful in what you do and provide a better experience than your competitors. Standing out from the crowd is not the only factor. You to have real substance behind it.