Future of Marketing is here…

Every time you think marketing (forget the newspaper ads. They are for the dead dodos!) think of your PC and Mobile Phones. They, the marketers, are behind the screen visible to you. They remain invisible, give you all manner of cues, and are in an enviable position to read each of your emotions while you see the advertisement! Yes, they can see you right through your PC screen, gadget screens, and TV screens. And if you think it’s better off with Alexa and Siri, think again. They too keep a watch over you! Put together, with the backing of AI & big, big data over EVERY PERSON WHO USES ANY SMART ELECTRONIC DEVICE they watch you 24x7x365!

Welcome to the world of connected devices where you do get connected, but try as much as you want, can’t seem to disconnect! The web, in its myriad forms, is upon each of us. It has changed (or is in the process of!) everything about life, be it thinking, speaking, writing, or even forming an opinion. If they are thus far pervasive, what would in the days to come, be of marketing?

Personalized marketing is right down to the pores on our bodies! If they can go down to identifying where you did what you did, there isn’t much that they don’t know about you. It would henceforth NOT be one-size-fits-all kind of thing, but shall be customized according to one’s personality, thoughts, likes, and dislikes! All this is due to AI, big data, and loads of snooping around! Put together, a machine on the cloud reads us like any other human would and decides to show us just the right stuff at the right time and place! With the weirdest of tastes and preferences, if you are online for a reasonable time, you are game enough for AI and their masters, the marketers!

Mobile-based. PCs are too bulky and so too tablets. Desk-top…what are they?? So when it comes to marketing, it HAS to be something close to our hearts! And nothing gets closer there than a smartphone. Not because it’s smart but because it’s small enough to fit our shirt pockets! And for precisely that reason, marketers are programming all their content, written, videos, audios, or in any other form to look just right on the screen of a smartphone. It started with the optimization of websites, but is today visible for any matter that can be read, seen and heard. That besides, one can even do all manner of searches and get information on a screen which is just about 6″ x 4″. In days to come, this would support other features when 5G becomes a reality worldwide with conferences, teaching, or any manner of information sharing becoming a necessity. With touch and feel sensors not being far these days, the small screen is set to go big with respect to communication!

Influencers. What do we use social-media most for these days? Obviously, to get information on products, places, people, and prevalent ideas! That makes mobiles immensely important! But more than that, it makes influencing, influencers, and expressing oneself equally important. With anonymity slowly disappearing from the digital world, people can be held down for their ideas making this field immensely important when it comes to one’s genuine opinions. For marketers, this is nothing less than a gold mine that is being milked for all of its worth. It has thus spawned a breed of professional influencers who, due to their knowledge of products (including those of competition), legalese, and trends, stay ahead of the rest. In doing so, they manage to have a loyal following of those who look up to them for the right inputs about product(s).

Clarity and transparency. With so much information traveling at such speeds, the first victim thankfully is opaqueness. You either expose or run the risk of being exposed. If and when the latter happens, losses can be substantial because, in the digital world, one is interested more in experiences than products. Giving a client/ user good experience takes time, effort, knowledge, resources, and most importantly, a good intention. Experiences thus termed bad get adverse reviews and coverage at the speed of light, which converts just as fast into lower sales and income. With products being second to experience and competition being what it is, getting back from such a drubbing is downright challenging. It can sometimes mean the end of a brand or line of products- a very, very tough and unrelenting scenario.

Marketing would subsume digital marketing. There was once the thought that digital marketing would rule over marketing, given that digital marketing is so pervasive and prevalent. Today, the feeling is, “how do we get clients to experience our products and/ or services.” A digital strategy is fine up to a point but is not all there is to it. The problem of over-dependence on digital marketing is that how-much-so-ever it evolves, it remains machine-driven.

In contrast, marketing beyond a point has to be humane. Stories have to relate to how products performed under certain conditions to create the right connect with the right audience and make them feel wanted. And like it or not, stories are of humans, never of machines. In all the marketing efforts, videos with the right message, audio, special effects etc. would play a significant role. Mind you, these have to be tuned to play on varied platforms, including smartphones!