I am pretty sure we are all astonished with the value technology has been giving us until today. It is really mind-boggling to have the potential to restore any information and connect in several different ways using a device fitting our pockets and travels with us anywhere. What is more amazing is that technology never stops and is always up to something new, which always surprises us with what is coming up next.
If you are an entrepreneur starting your new business or someone who wants to revamp and improve your existing one, technology is definitely the whole key concept to use where every single department of your business doubtlessly uses technology for many different reasons.
Taking a look now into 2018, there are many different marketing trends that should be taken into consideration because of their great impact on marketing strategies.
The first technological marketing trend will be talking about the Internet of Things (IoT) which clearly explains how things can be connected to the internet through sensors. Although creating IoT applications can be really tough and frustrating, it is now being redefined.
For example, monitoring an aging family member where a wearable alarm button is placed in a home of your old relative. If anything goes wrong with him/her, the button will send you a signal alarming you about the case to give you a peaceful and comfortable mind if you are out. However, with these astonishing technologies, we are not all living this kind of life until now.
The second marketing trend will be talking about augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) that both convince us about something that is real whereas it is fake. We saw major steps for augmented reality (AR) which add digital information on the appearance of something, and virtual reality (VR) which basically creates a simulated surrounding for us. They both were represented by thousands of games and apps such as the well-known Pokémon Go, an AR game which had billions of downloads but unfortunately dropped down rapidly. Things were not really taking off yet.
In 2017, apple released the iPhone 8 and iPhone X betting on augmented reality and trying to let the holder interact with the world around him. That is why Apple is taking a significant lead in ushering in a consumer AR revolution. The future iPhone 10 already includes sophisticated world tracking technologies, depth information camera, and the ability to scan your environment. Apple AR is a real huge step ahead! On the other hand, virtual reality is developing to a mixed-reality technology where now you are thinking, blinking, and even smiling with your smart computer.
For example, Magic Leap’s business is now using a dynamic digitalized light field signal which emerges realistic computer graphics with what the user sees in the real world. The quality of the virtual vision of this technology used by Magic Leap is now ahead of all others, their unique mind helped them do magical things such as VR camera techniques and novel VR applications. Virtual reality will definitely become a fundamental technology.
The third marketing trend is creating what is called a “Website Messaging Artificial Intelligence” where live chat is now used on websites by Chatbots that integrate a businesses’ chat system. These Chatbots have a huge amount of information in their archive and work upon training (they are not clever) and they are ready to communicate with you on a chat-networked interface.
For example, if you want to purchase a Nike shoes from their website, you would enter their website and start searching until you find the right shoes. However, if a Nike bot is created, you can message the bot and you will be asked about the specific details you want in that shoes as if you are in their retail store telling the employee about your preferences.
The fourth marketing trend is Account-Based Marketing (ABM) which is similar to personalized marketing and plays a role in delivering return-on-investments. ABM’s specialty is marketing to the whole company rather than a sole person (B2B) which engages with an implementation of a personalization strategy. Before planning this type of strategy, you have to collect some ideas of what you are going to do upon research for the aim of knowing your goal or purpose.
For example, you can use a personalized strategy on your website’s home page that shows what you are specifically giving the visitor in order to decrease your bounce rate while the visitor does not find his needs on your website. Moreover, you have to keep what customers previously liked on your website popping out in front of them in some category to decrease frustration when they turn back to you if they left your website to compare the product they already liked on another website or any other reason.
The fifth marketing trend is the simple Quantitative-based marketing which focuses on quantitative research. The traditional part of this technique relies on customer’s opinions about different questions you ask for using closed questionnaires and surveys. This technique is used to get insights about your product/service, competitors, preferences, and the like. However, it should also update your online marketing strategy. In 2018, analytics technology is now involved with big data for better results and decisions because of the main concept in marketing “Consumer Behavior”.
Data scientists are now being hired in businesses’ marketing departments for a better competition mainly with a collaboration of a team and technology to better collect data and find insights. Data scientists are aware that the consumer’s behavioural buying differ from one data measure to another.
For example, intent data are collected before the buying action of the consumer, which are searches and keywords used to find the desired product or service. However, behavioral data that reveal the engagement between the customer and the brand such as opened emails.
The sixth marketing trend is machine learning. Machine learning, by definition, is simply learning from the data where it is now able to recognize faces, detect objects, translate languages, do speeches, and classify data. “This is the year of machine-learning revolution”, machine learning is a marketing strategy that brings real time to life. It highly permits companies to analyze a huge amount of data, 24 hours per week, along with getting accurate insights. Some of the examples that go beneath machine learning are: self-driving cars and conversations with Siri. However, machine learning will be taking a wider space for the upcoming years in building products and services. Moreover, machine learning hides a competitive advantage which is the safe protection and security of businesses in order to distinguish who should have access to their product and who should be banned.
Concerning advertising, machine learning permits marketers to reflect the brain of professional buyers as a software to do the same developments they would do. Machine learning is a competitive advantage recommended to be used by marketers because it creates superior reports, reduces costs, allows easy predictions of outcomes, draws correlations, and boosts ad performance.
The final marketing trend is privacy protection. Privacy protections is now considered as a selling point were many companies are advertising themselves personal privacy protectors. This way is being used to gain loyal customers and build the customer’s trust. The easiest way for the company to advertise its privacy protection, is by mentioning their privacy policies on their websites for visitors to distinguish them. For instance, there is a new law called the GDPR which passed by the European Union and had a dominant impact on businesses’ actions toward protecting user’s data.
Consumers are now concerned about their private information that are being saved by companies such as accessed pictures, chats, emails, and the like. That is where businesses should establish and efficient end-point, email, and network protection that penetrates out dangerous types of files and spams. Moreover, companies can train their employees to be attentive about emails especially those containing attachments and to report any odd attachment or email to the IT department. Last but not least, companies can install a protection software that directly block exploit kits before infecting our systems.
Digital marketing strategies are now inaccurate without technology. That is why the more technology is surprising us, the more marketers are excelling in their work.
