Perhaps you’re familiar with the often-misquoted Darwin aphorism, "It is not the strongest species that survives but those that are adaptable to change." While this concept largely impacts the field of biology, it may also be applied to technology and the different fields that use modern tech in making improvements.
One industry that is set to go through massive changes is digital marketing. Those who dabble in this field should be aware of the changes influenced by modern technology to stay relevant. But to know how to adapt, you must first identify the so-called ‘disruptors’ that are set to change the world of digital marketing as you know it.
Cloud technology has blown the doors of businesses wide open when it comes to gathering massive amounts of customer data. This huge improvement in data collection can help deliver accurate and personalized campaigns for more precise targeting.
The integration of AI can help sift through the data and study patterns in consumer behavior to gain more insights for better ad targeting. Search engines now depend on AI to interpret queries and deliver relevant results.
Pretty soon, AI will take over chat platforms and deliver solutions in real time. Moreover, AI-powered tech is set to improve customer-centric marketing through better trend analysis and customer profiling. This will help create a more personalized approach to your marketing strategies.
Known to be a subset of AI, machine learning automates processes, collects and identifies valuable data, and does intelligent segmentation and analytics. Aside from these valuable functions, the most significant use is in the creation of content. Machine learning can help creators automatically churn out content and improve it as they go along.
Chatbots are currently being utilized to improve customer service with their quick response in giving out data-related answers and addressing simple requests. They are also easy to integrate into an app, website or social media platform, which could also be used in gathering relevant information for your marketing strategies.
With the growing popularity of virtual assistants and smart speakers, there’s an increasing number of searches done through voice. This has already sparked changes in paid and organic search strategy practices, prompting marketers to optimize websites based on conversational words.
AR and VR have made it possible for customers to try and explore a product before making a purchase while engaging their senses and emotions through the technology. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to use AR and VR as channels to create interactive promotional content and elevate the online shopping experience.
The growing number of IoT connected devices will result in a massive web of linked contraptions that you can utilize to gather consumer information, including their likes and dislikes.
IoT and wearable device can deliver a huge impact in the field of healthcare where activity trackers can measure a user’s vitals remotely. Outside of healthcare, physiological information could be used in understanding how a user feels about a certain brand based on their biological readings.
Despite its polarizing effect, blockchain has far more potentially significant uses than cryptocurrency. With its method of digital record-keeping that creates a transparent and tamper-proof ledger of transactions, blockchain has opened numerous possibilities in digital marketing.
One of them is used to fix digital display advertising through a blockchain browser. This changes how users interact with ads, with marketers able to create fewer but high-quality ads in the ecosystem.
Beacons are generally used in retail locations to gather information about customers within proximity based on their movements and current position. This allows you to understand their behavior and optimize their in-store experience while creating highly targeted and personalized messages.
The 5G era of mobile telecommunications is at hand and is set to improve connectivity 100 times faster than 4G. This fast connection brings forth many changes in internet behavior with faster page load times and lower bounce rates. AR and VR technology will be fully utilized, mobile users will be bigger, and IoT devices will perform better.
Marketers will be able to collect data faster and streamline their strategies to deliver a more effective campaign across their channels.
The evolution of technology is running at an increasingly faster pace, which means there will be newer concepts that are bound to be introduced in the field of digital marketing. As a marketer, you must have the skills to adapt to these changes and use them to your advantage. As you effectively evolve with these changes, any disruption in the field of digital marketing won’t leave you as an easy victim of natural selection.
Find out more about new technologies that could disrupt digital with Spiralytics new infographic.
By Expert commentator
This is a post we've invited from a digital marketing specialist who has agreed to share their expertise, opinions and case studies. Their details are given at the end of the article.
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