Technology will advance after every 18 months – Moore’s Law
It’s the year 2017 and Gordon Moore’s law already looks like an understatement to describe the upcoming wonders of technology. Technology has already stepped into and fortified every domain that we have heard of or will hear in the future.
Marketing is no exception. It can safely be said that without technology, words like analytics, big data and conversion hold no meaning. Marketing and technology together are the pair that helps each other grow. Without one, the other is quite incomplete. Let’s have a look at how the two are complementing each other in the present day and age:
Know your audience
“A brand is not so much about rational arguments, but the way the company resonates with the people.” – Steve Jobs
Every customer needs a little bit of pampering by the brands so that they go on to buy what the brand wants to offer. This is possible with a blend of well-researched marketing ideas informed by technology. Getting to know the consumers’ motivations, collect reliable data, and to satisfy the needs of your customer is the first step to making a favorite brand. With the desired technology to extract information and brilliant marketing ideas to tap the customers at the right place and at the right time, reaping the benefits of Mar-tech is possible. Technological development is on the rise and everyone is finding easier ways to stack up their work on machines. With the onslaught of technologies like cloud based computing, artificial intelligence and many more technologies that have marketers at the edge of their seats, it’s time that marketers catch up with advanced level technology to get more out of the market.
5 Trending technologies in marketing
“Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.” – Dan Zarrella
Brands can’t just take intuitions as a parameter to come to a conclusion about whether a campaign will work or not. They need numbers to rely on. To do that, a marketer has to open up his repertoire to advanced marketing methods that include actionable data points, personalization, location based marketing, content marketing and social listening. Here are some tricks of the trade you should consider next time you take the field:
1- The Number Games
The first step should be to determine the USP of products and services that your organization has to offer. Google Analytics provides actionable data that can be used to manage traffic and increase conversions. With this freeware, organizations can estimate the numbers they are accumulating and how many successful leads are generated against a particular cost invested. What the consumers search for is what you must be putting on the internet. Tools like Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery can help your organization validate elements of content. These are the tools for keyword research that allow you to find the right keywords to target for display ads, search ads and video ads. Tools like Pipedrive present a live view to identify exactly where your client stands in the funnel, and the numbers needed for conversion.
Additionally, these tools may shed light on terms and concepts around which you might find a wealth of search activity that you had not previously considered.
2- Personalization
A popular saying is often attributed to retailer John Wanamaker from the turn of the 20th century: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” What he really meant was that in advertising across the available channels and mediums, he was wasting money on presenting his message to the wrong people.
The more you know, the more you can personalize. So, it’s necessary to see what your customers want, when they want and how they want it. With ample data available just a click away from each customer, why not exploit it the way they want to be pampered. As a marketer, you need to keep your company relevant by making each customer experience personal. Not only are you paying attention to customers’ activity, but you also have to actively provide what they want and need. And you need to deliver highly relevant experiences across every channel. If consumers don’t get what they want, they’ll go elsewhere. Personalized marketing is integral to customers receiving relevant, timely, engaging, and personalized messages and advertisements that resonate with their unique needs and wants. Adobe Target is a cloud software tool that can help you personalize content and marketing. The tool includes a user interface, built-in best practices and robust optimization tools for following site visitors.
3- Learn to listen, listen to learn
Your brand is defined by the people when you are not in the room.
Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon
Social monitoring and listening will open up a new dimension of analytics by tracking what your dear customers have to say about your brand. With Hootsuite, you can track your brand as well as what customers are saying about you and your competition. It unveils what type of content element is prevalent in consumer dialogue and how the audience perceives it. With listening, brands can work on aspects that are not well received by the audience. They can also respond to the chatter in which they are mentioned. Users will feel a sense of belongingness to your brand if you reply actively to their queries.
4- Technology in Content Marketing
Poor content marketing can be related to selling shampoo to a bald man! Even if your shampoo is best in the market, it won’t sell because you are not targeting the right audience. With technology affecting our lives in so many ways, content is riding on it. Technology enables marketers to collect first party-data such as gender, interests, age group, location, and connect them with third-party data like click-through rates of blogs and social media participation. Content Management Systems (CMS) are widely used to create and modify digital content to make it more user friendly and easily discoverable. Facebook has launched Instant Articles to provide users a faster and more interactive alternative to slow loading pages. Brands can make use of it to promote their content on social media pages to enhance user readability.
5 -Location based marketing
Wherever you go, brands follow. The credit for this phenomenon is due to the Beacon chip technology in mobile phones which works on Bluetooth Low Energy. These chips communicate with multiple Beacon devices to form a network and are used by marketers to better personalize the messaging and mobile ads based on the customer’s proximity to their retail outlet. Location-based marketing can bridge the gap between online and physical customer experiences and promote impulse purchases. Location-based marketing requires the end-user’s permission to access the device’s current location. The technology behind Location Based Marketing takes advantage of geofencing, a software feature that uses triggers to send alerts when a device crosses a pre-defined geographic boundary. Location based marketing plays with the current mood of the customer and entices them to consider the offers available nearby.
What does the future hold for Mar-tech?
The days of ‘Spray and pray’ marketing are already gone and advanced technologies have already replaced them. Development of technology is relative, the further ahead on the timeline you go, the form-feature of technology becomes compact and more powerful. Advertising of the future is no longer going to target devices or channels, but is going to target people and their behavior. In the mix of rapidly growing technology, nobody is sure what surprises the future has in store for us – maybe virtual billboards, mood sensing interfaces or some other incredible technology that will help marketing grow, but one thing is certain - marketers will continue to find willing, high-probability audiences for their products and services with the technology they embrace.
There has never been a more exciting time to work in marketing, considering the plethora of technologies that are there to make our job easier. With each new wave of technology, marketers can connect with their audiences in a more direct manner and form deeper associations than ever before. Brands must accept the harsh truth that no particular brand owns the customer journey and they must move forward together to achieve a difficult feat. Many marketers have shifted their attention towards the new marketing tools while others are still rubbing stones to ignite the fire. These are the adolescent years of tech driven digital marketing and every brand must fight the competition in the market to prevail.
