Have you watched the Hunger Games film? A bunch of people fighting for their lives in an ever-changing environment. There are only two choices: to adapt or to die.
Maybe it’s too much to compare advertising landscape with the Hunger Games universe, but it’s useless to deny that marketing industry is changing too fast.
Recently-created technologies made a significant impact on the market.
Only a few months left until the end of 2018. So, it’s a right moment to create your new marketing strategy according to the new trends.
Authenticity always wins.
Consumers don’t trust in advertising and marketing. How to deal with this? A key word here is authenticity.
According to Stackla Report 86% of consumers declare that user-generated content is the most important factor when you choose a particular product. Consumers’ confidence is much more likely to be formed under the influence of other people, rather than companies. So such technique as influencer marketing becomes more and more effective.
Banner blindness is widely-known phenomenon. And the only way to struggle with it is to replace brand content with customer-generated one. User-generated content catches the eye immediately.
Let’s take a look at one of the best examples of using UGC (User Generated Content). GoPro strategy is brilliant. Every day people post 5000 videos with hashtag #GoPro. Among them you can find everything: from scuba diving and parachute jumping to filming wild nature and eco-friendly reserves.
How did the company develop such customers involvement? What is the secret of such popularity? The content of GoPro competitors is full of advertisement about waterproof lenses and megapixels quality.
GoPro videos whisper to us about passion, encourage new achievements, make us admire other people achievements. Thanks to UGC GoPro creators managed to conquer not only the hearts of consumers, but also their souls, and their wallets. So that’s why everyone is eager to buy a GoPro camera not some kind of XIAOMI.
Give customers a strong motivation to share experience that they get with your product. This strategy will certainly be payed off. According to consumers, user content is three times more reliable than pre-paid content (created by brand).
Voice search is on the wave
Did you know that almost a third of 3.5 billion requests addressed to Google every day — voice requests. (TheeDesign, 2017). More and more people are using Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Helper. It became possible due to a significant technological break in the field of human speech recognition.
But what does this curiosity mean for marketers? Basically — a lot of work!
Voice search has much differences with usual one. If you open Google in a browser and enter a search request, hundreds of pages with search results will appear. It’s not so difficult to be one of them. But what if you ask Siri to find anything.
Siri’s peculiarity is that it often gives only one search result for your request. If you are a marketing specialist your initial task is to be it!
If you succeed — your CTR will be rocket high. Therefore, it is vitally important to adapt SEO strategy to voice search.
Voice recognition technology is developing rapidly making a bad impact on all the key processes in the world of digital marketing. Focus on UX / UI optimization becomes completely useless if the interface is not displayed on the client device. What should we do? Unfortunately, there is no answer to this question.
According to ComScore, by 2020 half of search requests will be voice requests. Optimization of your services for voice search systems will increase the effectiveness of advertising exponentially.
Why is AI more effective than people?
Artificial intelligence is a hot topic in marketing. Although many people still do not understand what it is, the technology is developing rapidly.
AI is used in chat-bots to improve the quality of customers service. Chat bots process data requests faster than people. And they have their own character and personality. Thanks to this, client has possibility to get personalized service at any time of the day. Bots can be integrated into website, application and even social networks. Bots also collect information about users.
WeChat bots are quite handy.
The Chinese platform WeChat is built on chat bots system and satisfies the needs of more than one billion active users (Statista). In addition to the functions of messenger, WeChat processes e-commerce requests. For example, you can: call a taxi, order transportation, buy a new pair of Nikes, book a ticket or pay bills.
AI actively develops new algorithms for advertising. It helps webmasters to reduce ad costs and make more accurate targeting, making ad campaigns more profitable.
Miсromoments during the customer’s journey
American consumers are surfing through their smartphones more than 3 hours a day (eMarketer). We have reached the point when user is not ready for any additional supply of information.
Brands and marketers have to make an incredible effort to attract the attention of the audience. And here a magic science of micromoments starts.
A micromoment is a situation which stimulates a reflexive user’s desire to take device to learn something, do something, buy something or go somewhere. According to Think with Google estimates, users experience “micromoments” 150 times per day.
Why are micromoments so important? Now the user has only a few moments to decide what to buy, where to go or what restaurant to choose. Advertisement should attract attention in just a couple of seconds. For this, the right information should be provided in the right moment.
The entire customer’s journey is a combination of micromoments. So it’s extremely necessary to be at the right time in the right place.
AR & VR. The world is no longer limited by one reality
Modern users want to be involved with brand conception. AR and VR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality) give more opportunities to show your product or tell about the company.
Some big companies already use AR and VR to increase brand awareness and individual products sales. For example, IKEA has been using VR technology since 2016. Just download the IKEA VR Experience application, and you can look at the product before buying it. Companies-giants such as Nivea, Starbucks and Volkswagen are experimenting with AR.
At the moment, the market of VR and AR is estimated at 27 billion dollars. It is expected that in four years it will reach $ 209.2 billion (Statista).
Social networks capture the market
The number of social networks users around the world reached 3.196 billion people — it is 42% of the total digital market (We are Social). To ignore this high rate is simply unacceptable!
The life of an ordinary person becomes impossible without social networks. So, it’s very important to understand the processes which take place there.
Remember that now it’s not enough to place advertisement just in one source. Customers who are attracted by Facebook ads are not the same who came from YouTube. And those who came from YouTube are not similar to the direct leads from your website. The key to success is to share content between multiple platforms.
Social media have taken over. It is the right time to include them into your marketing strategy!
Visual search is bigger than you think
Machine learning is bringing online search to new levels. And it’s not just about the voice search. While small companies struggled to capture voice requests, large companies such as Google, Pinterest and Microsoft focused on developing a visual search system.
How does it work? When Google first introduced its invention, it was described as a reverse search. Instead of entering a text request and getting results in the form of images, you can point the phone camera to the object and find information about it on the Internet.
Visual search will identify the objects within the picture and gives you images associated with these objects. For example, if you point your phone to the image of bed, the search gives you variants of identical or similar bed to buy.
But, it’s not so easy to create such a visual search application. The process of human thinking should be reproduced to create this technology. Artificial intelligence should not only identify the image, but also recognize different colors, shapes, sizes and patterns in the same way that a human does.
As 93% of consumers consider visualisation a key factor during decision making (Kissmetrics), the revolution of retail industry is inevitable.
Conclusion:
Advertising landscape is constantly changing. Every year new trends appear. Some of them remain and change usual industry; and some of them are gone. Learn to distinguish between them. Do your research. Adapt to the situation.
Key outcomes:
- Do not lose authenticity. Use customers content. Consumer believes a usual person three times more often than a brand.
- By 2020, half of all search requests will be voice. Base your advertising strategy on this fact.
- Customer’s journey is a combination of micromoments. Be at the right time in the right place.
- VR and AR marketing is on the rise. It’s time to include them in your strategy.
- If you are not on social network, you don’t exist at all!
- Visual search technology will provide new opportunities for marketers.
