Sales are what drives a business. You can have a great development or product sourcing team on your business, you can have great recipes in your restaurant but if the marketing is not done right, everything else will go in vein. Marketing is what runs a business and therefore, every company whether they are big or small should be very sincere about their marketing plans.
Marketing has evolved a lot with internet in the last couple of years. As the technology is evolving and the attention of consumers are shifting from place to place, marketing as a strategy is also changing on every day basis. However, what will be the future of marketing? Will marketing remain as it is today or will we see a futuristic version of marketing very soon?
Social Media Based Marketing
This is not the future anymore as social media has already been established as a viable source of marketing channel for companies. Almost all companies, big and small companies, around the world are now heavily investing on social platforms to reach their consumers. Small businesses have also thrived with the help of social media. Companies like Shopify has made it easier for everyone to start a business online and grow with the help of methods such as dropshipping.
A big percentage of online businesses now heavily depend on traffic from Facebook, Twitter and other social media. It is cheaper to get traffic from social media but that is not the only reason why companies are going for it. The most important reason is the fact that you are receiving a detailed report as a business owner on whether your adverts are converting or not. Also, it is a lot easier to alter and change your adverts on a digital platform than changing a TVC or a billboard.
These are the primary reasons that why more and more companies are moving towards digital advertising than traditional ones. Big events such as super bowl still attract a lot of sponsorship and TV advertisements but apart from those big events, social media is the way to go ahead for most companies.
Search Engine Marketing
Everyday, more and more people are using search engines such as Google to find information. It can be an information about anything, from a restaurant to health care. Search engine marketing has taken a jump with that. Google earns most of it’s revenue from search engine advertisement.
There are different ways to bring your business to your target audience with the help of search engine marketing. It can be even done with paid tools such as Google Adwords. If you have the time and if you are willing to go through the SEO route, then you can also perform different actions on and off your website to make it rank higher on the search results. There are companies out there who do SEO for businesses.
Product Placements
With less and less people interested in looking at a billboard or a television advertisement, product placement has become very popular. Small companies have played a big role in making sure that they reach out to their consumers with the help of product placements.
Influencer Marketing
As social media becomes more popular, there are influencers or popular people who are followed by a lot of people. Recommendations, updates or even shares from these people matter a lot to those who follow them. That’s how the power of Influencer marketing grew. As a company, you can now hire an influencer to talk about your product or business. This has been going on for a few years now. Instagram influencers are now paid millions of dollars to talk about products or services on their personal profiles.
It is not only the celebrities who are making money with influencer marketing. You as a company can actually contact a lot of small influencers are who are not necessarily celebrities. The conversion rate is good and this is a win-win situation for both the parties.
Sponsorships
Sponsorships have always been there and it is not likely to go away even in the digital era. Sponsorships are now very common on YouTube. Companies talk to big channels or brands to sponsor their videos. Companies are now also looking at the emerging podcast market to sponsor podcast episodes. These are easy ways to directly connect with the consumers who actually consume videos and podcasts with full attention.
There was always a problem with traditional sponsorship deals. People used to like a television show but they were not into the sponsors at all as the connection was not there. Podcast and YouTube videos solved that problem. If you are a tech company and if you offer sponsorship on a tech podcast or a tech review YouTube channel, the chance is very high that you will receive more conversion and people are more likely to remember you this way.
At the end of the day, marketing will keep on growing. With new technologies such as voice based operation from Google Assistant and Alexa from Amazon, we will see new changes in the field of marketing. Also, with the development of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, marketing is going to evolve too.
One thing is very obvious to marketers which is the fact that marketing is not going to be ‘in your face’ anymore. Marketing as a form of promotion will be subliminal and hardly noticeable if companies want their brands to be remembered. Almost all recent studies have showed that people do not like advertisements or distractions in the middle of what they are doing. Therefore, companies need to find in a way to blend their marketing efforts with the attention of users so that they don’t end up hating the company at the end of the day.
