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Technology has definitely taken over marketing and it will continue into 2018. Since consumers now demand more integrated activities, staying up with the latest trends is important to the future success of your business. When looking at your tomorrow, you’ll need to seek advancements in the technology industry and expand your horizons. Following are a few things you may want to include in order to make the most of your marketing dollars.
In This Post:
Track Your Customer’s Experiences
New data collection software is now helping entrepreneurs capitalize on how customers interact with websites. Customer thinking, their interactions on sites as well as with each other and how they come to decisions is valuable information to those with services and/or products to offer. The results are helping improve web design, customer loyalty and app capitalization. It is anticipated that such programs will continue to develop to the point of utilizing artificial intelligence as the main source of analysis and predictability. By using collected data in the development of outreach methods and advertising platforms, business owners can expect a boom in their bottom line.
Allow Advertising to Evolve
Traditional advertising is becoming passé in favor of “native advertising”. By 2021, it is anticipated that over 74% of all advertising campaigns will be in that form and for good reason. Consumers are becoming savvier and can spot an ad a mile away. As a result, they’re skeptical of everything it contains and do everything possible to avoid it. However, native ads look and sound like content. In a sense, the ads are camouflaged to appear like editorial content or part of the show. It’s much like major manufacturers advertising their brand on movies in the form of having a bottle of Tide sitting on a washer. It serves as a subliminal ad after which the brand will “rub off” on the viewer making it more likely that they’ll buy that brand once in the store. The second form is called “smart content” which is structured. This is where meaning is added to advertising content in such a way that computers can organize, search, process and bring it up during a generic search. The result is an increase in the value of the data collected and increasing traffic.
Use What’s Already There
With the bombardment of content advertising on TV, radio, in print and on the internet, 2018 will see a turn toward marketers utilizing space that’s already taken. You can see this with Nu Skin, for example, as it utilized LinkedIn and other such established sites. By increasing your visibility on established sites with good reputations, you take advantage of a loyal audience that is interested in the products and/or services you have to offer. Not only is this type of sharing less expensive but also reduces the amount of content you have to produce while increasing your visibility exponentially. The thought is that the trend will reduce over-saturation while allowing consumers to find the content they’re really interested in. The goal is to get a leg-up in online visibility.
Personalize Your Methods of Communication
2018 is also going to see an explosion in chat-bots as the new mode of communication with consumers. Let’s face it, no one likes those robots installed in place of people at large corporations. However, with an improvement in artificial intelligence, chat-bots can now hold conversations with online users allowing you to transform the way consumers interact with your site. Since many companies are now linked to social media sites like Facebook, messenger bots and chat-bots are becoming part of advertising content at an amazing rate. It allows large and small companies to reach a larger audience than possible in any other way.
There are many more trends that will be seen during 2018. Right now it’s time to review and analyze your marketing strategies for 2017. Your results will help you establish a new budget and determine which of the new trends will be the most effective at moving your company to the next level.
