Digital Marketing – A Glance at the Future

The substantial growth of Digital Marketing over the period is observed by the pattern of disruptions. From simply having website, basic social media management and blog publishing to marketing automation tools, Digital Marketing has enormously evolved.

Today’s trends don’t take too long to be obsolete and replaced by the new ones. With this transition taking place in full swing, Marketers seem to be having the full control over digital experience in coming years.

The future holds some great things for Digital Marketers to look forward to. Here’s a few interesting findings, I’ve tried to summarize.

1. Key Marketing Channels

The radical shift in Digital Marketing over the years has opened multiple avenues of customer touch-points. Marketers must identify those touch-points and understand how to interact with customers on the digital platform. It brings customer experience to life.

Every business has a certain set of customer segment. It will be a challenge for marketers to distinguish the appropriate platforms for their brands. They need to precisely analyze the target audience to find out the right mediums. Investing in wrong channels will be a shot in the dark and won’t take you anywhere.

The bigger challenge is going to be the visibility. With the crazy amount of content being uploaded on internet every day, managing your brand presence over a considerable time is not easy in this insanely competitive online world!!

Marketers should also be flexible enough to switch to another channel if the other one is not working for them. They really need to be sharply analytical in nature to find out the performance insights of their campaigns. Basically, they must be prone to change to grasp the new trends.

So, does this chart reflect your marketing channels? If not, then manage your promotion platforms based on your audience and priorities. Remember do invest but invest wisely.

2. Technology Trends

I’m sure Mobile in the first place won’t surprise you at all. It now constitutes more than half of the web traffic. One thing is evident that Mobile will continue to dominate the Digital landscape. So, keep getting better at it.

Personalization has been around for a while and CMOs have started realizing the importance and making it a part of their integrated marketing strategy. However, we’ve just scratched the surface. Geo targeting only is not enough. Personalization is way more in depth and needs to be explored extensively to add value to user experience. It is up to the marketers how they use the analytics insights to customize the digital experience to customers and display the product or any piece of content they look for without much effort. Basically, they must make the most of personalization technology.

Emerging technologies have opened new horizons for Digital Marketing as shown in the chart. New and ground-breaking technologies like IoT, Blockchain, AR/VR etc. are expected to impact the marketing strategies in an unprecedented way in years to come. There are many speculations and predictions as to how it will affect your marketing, but it isn’t yet clear. Don’t believe anything you read or hear to be true about it.

Start catching up with these new and exciting technologies to get ahead of the curve.

3. More Integrated (360 degree) Marketing with CONSISTENCY

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Gone are the days where having just a website and putting up some blogs was enough. As the point no. 1 says, the marketing avenues today are more than ever. Your customers have plenty of options! Hit them from every corner. Shortlist the online platforms where your customers are and create an all-round digital strategy to reach out to them that covers all the bases. 

But as a matter of fact, you will never achieve your objective if you lack consistency. You have to do it for a long period of time to reach your goals. Why I am stressing on consistency because the digital media (flooded with tons of content everyday) now has so much to offer that customers don’t even remember your product/brand they’ve seen yesterday. You have to keep reminding them of it in such a way they don’t feel bored or irritated. “For example, after someone reads a blog article on your site, follow it up with an email sharing more meaningful content.” (Forbes)

Your digital strategy has to have the right combination and inclusive of paid, social, organic, email, mobile, analytics, content and influential marketing.

4. Emerging Aspects of Marketing

Now this one is interesting and perhaps the most of the marketers are struggling with. With new and exciting technologies springing up, marketers indeed have to ensure that they catch up with the latest trends and stay up-to-date.

For example, Digital Transformation is not just confined to the technical staff or CIO of the organization. It is equally important for CMO as well. Marketers must embrace this change to stay ahead the game.

Adding further, similar to the integrated marketing, marketers should consider full marketing technology stack. It’s CMO’s job to figure out the chances of implementing marketing automation tool more than CIO. Marketing is no longer a non technical domain.

Based on the nature of the business, Marketers must consider their full technology stack and incorporate it all into their strategy. Be it a social media, CMS, analytics, email or anything else, they can’t depend on just one software or automation tool. It will never work them. They must collaborate them all to execute successfully across all the marketing channels.

5. Storytelling

Last but not the least; it is one of the most interesting marketing aspects and will never go out of style. Because Storytelling is the only way connect with your customers on a personal level, no matter how many marketing automation tools or latest technology you use. However it’s not as simple as it sounds. Storytelling is something which is easy to do but hard to master.

Marketers have lately started realized the value of storytelling, but they really seem to be struggling with it. They are doing it but not as good as it should be. There are brands which have an amazing story to tell but just can’t hit the nail on the head.

Most of the marketers can’t do it because they fail to choose the right story for customers. Your story needs to have the emotional punch that connects your products to your audience. You have to capture the attention, develop engaging and strategic narratives and build trust through storytelling. Make your stories revolve around what your customers want to buy rather than what you want to sell. Talk about challenges, address objections, highlight the key features, add value, give a human touch and conclude with resolution. All these ingredients must be added to your story to sell.

We are living in an era where you don’t sell products anymore but solutions through stories. That’s the power of Storytelling in marketing is simply inevitable.

So, the future seems fascinating, but it’s not a cakewalk. There’s a lot for marketers to catch up with.

I assume anyone who’s in the Digital marketing space or simply just interested in the domain is keeping an eye on these digital marketing trends and keenly observing them too! Please share your thoughts if I’ve missed out on any other aspect or add anything to the points in the article.