Marketing Is Evolving Again
Those involved in advertising know that the size of the global advertising pie remains roughly constant at around $500 billion. As a result, whenever a new marketing channel enters the fray, it typically succeeded by eating up the market share of other marketing methods. This decade, digital marketing has been by far the most successful marketing channel and now in 2017 it is also the largest, eclipsing television. For many analysts, this is a turning point which highlights the importance of the digital marketplace in a highly interconnected world.
But if digital marketing is going to retain its lead, it’s going to have to develop new strategies. Here are some of the ways that the channel is evolving.
Trust Will Be Reestablished
2016 was a bad year for digital marketing PR. After a number of high-profile cases and controversial practices, many consumers are getting savvy to internet marketing and taking action into their own hands to shut it down. A growing proportion of internet users are using ad-blockers – blockers which could potentially starve the internet of advertising money and force advertisers to get their message out through other channels.
Worse still, with developments in AI, it’s getting harder and harder for companies to find ways around ad blocking algorithms. Researchers at MIT have recently announced that their ad blockers have started using things like font, field size and other cues to distinguish ads from content, just like people do. It’s only a matter of time before this technology gets into the hands of the general public.
The biggest challenge this year, therefore, is transparency. Even small errors in the way that companies conduct their digital marketing can lead to significant issues.
New Organisations Will Use Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is typically seen as something that ecommerce companies and tech startups do to get themselves known. It’s not something that regular businesses and organizations are that heavily into. However, with the rise of things like NGO and school marketing, the appeal of digital marketing is broadening. The reason for this is clear: with limited market size, every organization that relies on income from a limited pool of people must make use of all the marketing channels available to it.
Audio Experiences Will Go Mainstream
With the release of Amazon Echo last year, it could be argued that the home assistant finally went mainstream. This year, the number of units sold is expected to balloon. The more people who buy voice-interactive products, the more they will expect their online experience to reflect this. As a result, digital marketing will continue to evolve. Spoken commands will become the new mouse and keyboard and consumers will start to expect to be able to talk to the internet and your organization.
What that means in practice is still a little unclear. According to industry expert Trevor Guthrie, the rise of things like Google Home and Amazon Echo will have a profound impact. He expects that companies will need to enhance the way that they interact with customers using voice.
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