Digital trends reshape media business
Daily work in Finnish media houses is undergoing inevitable transformation. Job content and working methods change, and new job titles are created as a result of digitalisation.
In the following, IT experts Anna Wäyrynen, Analytics Manager at Accenture, and Jouni Alin and Sami Salmijärvi, Senior Managers at Deloitte, discuss digital trends.
1. Deeper involvement and interaction
In recent years, online visitors have increasingly started producing content for the online services of companies and organisations. The trend is to deepen further this interaction. Visitors produce a wide variety of online content, while companies and organisations are more actively building tailored content and personalised landing pages for their visitors. The efficiency of interaction is no longer measured by the number of fans but by their activity.
Anna Wäyrynen
Analytics Manager
Users of digital channels today expect targeted content and marketing. However, some of them are concerned about what data may be collected from them. According to a survey by Accenture, one of the most important means for expanding the use of digital services is to increase users’ trust and confidence in the new services through data security and privacy protection measures. According to the survey, an excellent user experience and a leading digital brand are two other factors that increase the use of digital services.
Sami Salmijärvi
Senior Manager
Today, these elements play an important role when attracting and engaging consumers to use various online services. From the revenue generating perspective, what is most important is that as many potential customers as possible see the advertisement purchased by the advertiser and the ad triggers the desired action in them. Successful analytics leads to more traffic and attracts desired active consumers to use the services.
2. Strategy is the King
Growth hunters, such as BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and USA Today, are not successful because of their content, such as ranking lists, questionnaires, celebrity photos or sports coverage. They are successful because of their outstanding community engagement and search optimisation strategies – often, actually, despite the contents.
Sami Salmijärvi
Senior Manager
Content owners and producers must decide how to position themselves in the content production and consumption value chain. They have to consider whether it would be wiser to build consumer services of their own or to sell their content to existing media. What is particularly important to consider is how to make consumers stay with the chosen service. In my opinion, winners always offer interesting content that helps them to hold on to consumers.
Anna Wäyrynen
Analytics Manager
The importance of sharing content in social media is increasingly emphasised. Analysis of social networks and, consequently, the identification and use of alpha users are keys to growth in digital media. Digital strategy is not only about content and usability, it is also about extensive utilisation of the opportunities provided by technology.
3. Programmed, targeted marketing is expanding
Along with the development of technology and data analytics, marketing is becoming more targeted and, at the same time, more efficient than ever. Marketing campaigns are triggered by parameters set in software and algorithms. Targeted marketing requires more information about consumers, but consumers are ready to provide their information in order to access better services.
Jouni Alin
Senior Manager
The automation of marketing, integration of channels and rapid response require most of all high-standard, comprehensive and, possibly, real-time customer data. In addition to investment in technology and data analytics, we will probably also need significant investment in the development of information pools and operating methods. So far, these have rarely been viewed from the perspectives of multichannel and real-time solutions and continuous customer dialogue. We should be particularly careful with automation; there’s a risk of jumping to too far-reaching conclusions based on too limited or imperfect information.
Anna Wäyrynen
Analytics Manager
The time, place and identifiability of users on different devices provide the opportunity for offering the right service and content to the user at the right time. Such content may include location-related news, announcements or advertisements that are sent to the user’s mobile device in real-time on the basis of the user’s location data. Based on the analysis of data, it is also possible to recommend products or services that have interested other similar consumers.
4. Data analytics invade workplaces
Job titles that include the word ‘Data’ or ‘Science’ will become more common at the executive and expert levels. Companies with experts who can extract the essential information from extensive masses of data and convert it into market value will be successful. In this work, startup companies and small enterprises have a considerable edge over traditional industry.
Jouni Alin
Senior Manager
The number of Data Scientist or Analyst titles is strongly increasing also in the domestic market. However, educational services responding to the need have not increased at a similar rate. In addition to detecting potential candidates, the problem is how to sell the job to them; there are great differences between companies in their readiness and maturity to apply data analytics.
Anna Wäyrynen
Analytics Manager
Globally, there is a clearly noticeable trend in the job market indicating high demand for data analysts. Internationally, universities are aware of this, but it takes time to produce the right type of professionals for the job market. The use of the data in daily business is an absolute necessity, not just an opportunity. It is challenging to combine industrial expertise with analytics expertise and find the people with the right profile. An analyst who understands analytics and is interested in the industry and an experienced professional in the field make an ideal team.
In late autumn 2014 Kauppalehti hired its first growth hacker whose task it is to attract more visitors to the Kauppalehti website and speed up the development of digital business.