Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash
Some estimates state that twenty years ago, there were some 10,000 websites, and only two million computers connected to the internet. Marketing mostly focused on direct mail, TV ads, and press campaigns. While you still have to be able to write well enough to get your point across, and while a picture still says a thousand words, marketing is evolving quickly to keep up with all the technological advancements we enjoy today.
Social networking
Social networking is critical for any business’s marketing campaign. Pew Research Center estimates that 65% of adults now use social media sites. This opens up an entirely new way to reach adults – Facebook ads, ad campaigns in apps. It’s also common for businesses, products, and people to gain popularity without any extra advertising or marketing dollars being spent. Do you remember “Hot Mug Shot Guy?” His mugshot went viral and now he’s out of jail and working on a modeling contract.
And social is starting to mean so much more than just social. Take Pinterest for example. They have started allowing their customers to not only “Pin” products they like, but also purchase an item directly from the Pinterest app. Another trend that is growing is the use of videos. Facebook and Instagram both allow video, and consumers would rather watch a video than read written content. It’s faster, more accessible with upgrades in internet speed, and it’s much more captivating. If you haven’t started developing your video content strategy, you need to start soon. With apps and technology ever changing, marketing strategies will have to adjust to keep up.
Detailed web analytics
Marketing is evolving by using detailed web analytics. Today, we have the ability to not only collect information from customers, but to track it, compare it, and develop marketing strategies that focus on the data collected. You can collect information by creating a squeeze page for your website. Then you can use this information to find out data like, how many customers live within two miles of your business. Then you can research how many competitors also live within this two miles. From there, you can create specific marketing techniques to make sure these customers choose your business instead of your rivals’ business. With web analytics, you can collect just about every kind of information you can imagine and use this when planning your marketing strategy.
Virtual reality
If you haven’t already heard, virtual reality – or VR – is coming. Oculus, the biggest name in VR today, just struck a deal with Samsung to provide Samsung Gear, where users of the Samsung Galaxy smart phone will be able to utilize virtual reality. Oculus is also about to release their VR product, Rift, that will work with major gaming systems, PCs, and even Facebook. Virtual reality will change the way marketing is done in a major way. If you are marketing a bed and breakfast, you can take your potential customers there and let them see first hand how much they will enjoy it. The possibilities are endless. Virtual reality is coming and marketing is evolving, or needs to be evolving, in order to keep up.
There are some exciting new changes in store for technology and with that, marketing must continue to evolve. Marketing has already come a long way in the last twenty years, but the excitement still lies ahead. Make sure you are ready for it.