What Does the Future of Digital Marketing Hold?
Digital marketing has been around for a fair amount of time, helping businesses in growing out of their traditional marketing practices towards faster, efficient and sounder means of ROI. However, previous digital marketing techniques used by B2B corporations have been a subject for debate due to their diminishing value and weaker results. These techniques hold no guidelines for the periods of disruptions often observed in digital marketing. In this article, we share some new guidelines, strategies, and techniques that will offer insight into where digital marketing is currently leading and what it holds for the future.
What are the New Digital Marketing Guidelines?
Previous digital marketing models solely focused on growing the number of visits on a website and were not concerned with converting leads into customers. This new model of digital marketing is more extensive and aims to prepare businesses for irregularities and periods of disruptions. It comprises of:
The Integration of Inbound and Outbound Marketing
The combination of inbound and outbound marketing has proven to show major potential. This method of “warm-calling”, consists of creating desirable content for the consumer while seeking them out. A good example of this would be sending a follow-up email to a consumer containing content similar to his interests.
Adding Roles to Marketing Resources
CIOs are no longer solely accountable for bringing about the digital maturity of an organization. The CMO has to play an active role in leading marketing initiatives and driving revenue. CMOS have to work hand in hand with the CIOs to execute marketing strategies in a way that generates the highest ROI.
Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing is a great way of aligning marketing activities with account strategies. Whether you are a B2B, MSP or SaaS organization, account-based marketing is a key method for increasing account relevance and generating the highest value out of marketing.
Marketing Softwares and Tools
The design and incorporation of marketing technology infrastructure play a crucial role in generating value, as the creative design itself single-handedly cannot do the job. One software or tool does not hold the capability of running the show alone. Most online merchants also seek the services of a reliable web development company to custom build plugins and marketing tools to automate their online operation. While customer-relation management (CRM) plays a vital role in driving sales growth, it alone cannot generate revenue, a sound marketing technology infrastructure is required. Every little piece plays its part.
Omnichannel Marketing
Cross-channel marketing or omnichannel marketing is a content strategy employed by corporations looking to enhance their user experience. Concentrating on a single channel alone can put restraints on an organization’s limitations, especially if their target audience does not lie within that narrow channel. Omnichannel marketing strategies utilize the concepts of deep analytics and data mining, such as AI and machine learning to generate maximum user experience.
What are These Periods of Disruption?
In order to better prepare for the periods of disruption, the first one has to understand their primary cause. By observing the digital lives of consumers and their interactions with products, services, and communications over the passage of years, a pattern can be observed. This pattern primarily consists of three key points:
Ease of Access
Quick and easy accessibility is of the utmost importance for consumers. The more accessible digital content and data are to consumers, the more it attracts them. Strategies that enhance the ease of access to digital data are considered to be of significant value.
Interactive Content
The concept of “content is king” is as relevant today as it was years ago. Once consumers have ease of accessibility to digital data, they search for interactive content. With the advancement of digital content, whether it be videos or virtual reality, consumers have longed for content that engages with them and sparks their interest.
A desire for interactive content is a behavioral trait of consumers. Organizations need to learn to focus more on customer care and build a more interactive, one-to-one engagement marketing strategy that aims to provide a source of constant useful content to their consumers. Consider employing a more honest, open and consumer need based approach when interacting with potential customers.
Personalized Experience
Consumers have become used to the idea of personalizing their digital interactions on the internet. Selecting, altering or modifying information, services, and products in order to customize their digital experience is something that consumers have grown quite fond of. From a world of telegrams to this advanced era of the internet and smartphones, technology has come a long way, and buyers in return now expect to receive the best version of it. Facilitating the consumers throughout their experience and catering to their needs is to our knowledge and expertise the most effective means to successfully drive a marketing strategy.
Bilal Imtiaz is an Online Marketing Specialist with 1 year of experience in Digital Media and is currently SEO Executive at Unitedsol, a leading e-commerce web design and development agency. Over the years, Unitedsol has successfully delivered projects in Magento, WordPress, WooCommerce, Joomla and other CMS/shopping cart platforms. You can find him on the LinkedIn.
