Optimizing the digital marketing mix in the South African banking industry.

Abstract

The South African banking industry is dominated by four banks First Rand Bank, Standard Bank, Nedbank and ABSA. The South African banking sector is known to possess a well-regulated banking system despite its competitive operating landscape. Globalization and technological advances have changed the landscape of the world that we currently live in today. These global societal forces have highlighted the advantages of digital marketing. Marketers in the banking realm are rapidly transforming traditional activities into digital activities. The reason for this movement is due to the fact that digital marketing activities have low associated costs and performance can be much more easily measured. Post globalization and the internet boom, customer decision making processes have changed to reflect the behaviours of the newly informed customers. The new decision making process have let to multi-channel campaigns which are deemed necessary to engage with customers on as many customer touch points as possible. The purpose of the study is to identify the factors influencing a customer’s attitude to engage with a digital marketing tool, to identify the most effective digital marketing tools and ultimately determine the optimum spread of digital marketing efforts with respect to marketing strategies such as awareness, engagement and acquisition campaigns. The research was conducted using a survey in the format of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was structured based on the conceptual framework due to the fact the research was related to the topic of digital marketing it was appropriate to design a webbased survey. The population for this survey were from the province of Gauteng. Key findings included the factors influencing customer preferences per a stage of the customers’ decision making process (awareness, engagement, acquisition). Demographics were found to have influence on customer preference as well as the effectiveness of the content for communication. These results assisted in determining the optimized digital marketing mixes per a stage of the customers’ decision making process.