While writing a business plan, almost every entrepreneur or business person stumble when they need to prepare a marketing and advertising blueprint. Marketing culture today is remarkably different than what it used to be as behavior of people in the business environment change with time and experiences. Today, marketing and advertising has taken a ‘personal’ and digital form with remarkably larger functionalism. Personalized marketing has a constructive impact on the intended audience and generates more engagement. It leads to increased feedback which eventually gives more data and data is gold in designing marketing strategies.
According to Statista, 90% of consumers find personalized marketing content very or somewhat appealing, with just 4% saying that they find it not very or not at all appealing. A high value creating personalized content is what companies today aim to deliver. Customers today have the urge to feel special and personalized marketing is the way to go. One of the technological tools taking strides in this field is voice search. 13% of all households in the United States owned a smart speaker in 2017, per OC&C Strategy Consultants. That number is predicted to rise to 55% by 2022. The younger generations have the most usage of voice search on the internet. Today, to enhance their reach, companies use Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The elevating rate of voice search is causing companies like Google to introduce new SEO algorithms, so that it is responsive and accurate towards voice searches. Corporates must restructure their SEO strategies in terms of optimization, languages, verbal keywords and content due to rise in responsive speakers and voice search.
Marketing and advertising have become more digital than ever. User review plays a pivotal role in altering buying decisions. According to Andrei Vasilescu, CEO and digital marketing expert at DontPayFull “Today, customer reviews influence more than 95 percent of online customers before they decide to purchase. Moreover, more than 90 percent of people step back from buying the things online which do not have any reviews, good or bad.” With personalized marketing and advertising taking a progressive path, user review will determine a significant portion of purchase decision process.
Artificial intelligence has enhanced with time and has started to take over the processes of marketing and advertising. Companies use bots to communicate with their customers through online channels and their efficiency is being addressed gradually. According to Gartner, 25% of customer service will use chatbot technology by 2020, up from less than 2% in 2017. Video marketing is also here to stay for a long time as 72% of businesses say video has improved their conversion rate and 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. Influencer marketing blends well with today’s marketing mechanism. Businesses are making $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. That is an astounding number for any business and this trend is predicted to go on for as long as marketing exists. AR and VR synergizes product with quality, content and story-telling. That has led to 84% of consumers to recall a brand, where brand recall for traditional video advertising is only around 53%.
Analyzing the impact, it is safe to say that most of these trends will continue to run the market for decades. User review will continue to be the king and companies will spend more on maintaining positive reviews. Artificial intelligence will persist in the market to intensify its share in the process, but the human mind and effort will still be irreplaceable. With more companies adapting to personalized marketing, data mining companies will benefit from this mechanism. Personalization will be the center of marketing and all the other efforts will revolve around it. Millennials and the members of the Generation Z will be highly influenced by this and the marketing apparatus will enhance as the business environment will continue to evolve with trends of the newest generation.