The Road Ahead in Digital Marketing

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THE ROAD AHEAD IN DIGITAL MARKETING

Consider this – You go into a TV showroom and as you pass each TV set, descriptions are flashing on your mobile phone about pricing, features and Unique Selling Propositions (USP).

You would only be shown cues to the ones that best suit your requirements. You browse through them and select one that you would generally prefer over the others, and based on your choice and preference your mobile now answers your queries. There's more. You might expect a bot or an audiovisual aid to educate you about each of the TVs as you pass by them.

Consider this – Your television may completely become obsolete; it may just transform into a glass screen. It will be used to project all sorts of content from multiple streams.

(Or)

Imagine this – When you drive back home in your car, it sends a message to your refrigerator about your expected time of arrival and the instructions to check on the food to be served once you are home. The refrigerator sends back a message suggesting a fill-in on the things to be replenished based on your most preferred food choices and habits.

This is an interesting example of IoT coupled with AI.

I cite this example just to suggest that the digital medium is omnipresent. Today's era belongs to ubiquitous screens. The digitizing of the physical world by IoT would make it possible to acquire, analyze, and use data at a scale, scope, and speed never before achieved.

The IoT can monitor and manage objects in the physical world electronically, making it possible to bring data-led inferences towards optimizing the performances of systems and processes. IoT applications, at the moment, connect businesses to consumers and have a long way to go. Imagine glass screens, fitness monitors, e-waste sensors and self-driving cars in the future.

Let us understand the subject with the help of an example of connected cars. Car manufacturers can collect driver data with the help of sensors to know what car features are most used, the speed of driving to favorite locations, the performance of different components, etc., and use them accordingly. At the same time, citizens who are in unfamiliar places or need help, benefit from connected cars by knowing the locations, mechanics and other aspects. It symbolizes how IoT is driving companies to change their business model to capture value in non-traditional areas.

Similarly, IoT has the potential for transformative change in human health. Using connected devices to continuously monitor patients, the IoT can improve living conditions and can find a more efficient answer to the treatment of chronic illnesses.

It could consequently improve the quality of life for millions of patients. As per a research study by McKinsey, the use of IoT systems could enable societal benefits worth more than $500 billion per year, based on the improved health of users.

Omni Screens:

The world would increasingly see the Omni Screens culture as a direct outcome of multiple touch points of synchronization around different technologies and genres leading to unanimous deliverables and outcomes.

A modern example of how the future of glass evolves in the coming years?

Enclosed herewith is a purview on the precision glass that would evolve into a seamless integration in our daily lives, transmitting real-time information where people stay connected with a virtual world at their fingertips. Imagine a one-dimensional market transforming into a high-end electronic gadget.

Welcome to a future world made of glass.

As displays become more integrated into our daily lives, consumers are demanding sharper pictures, more vivid colors, and faster refresh rates that come from smaller, more densely-packed transistors—leading to tech engineers integrating display glass.

This would improve the way we see, touch, transmit, and process information; in effect, revolutionizing the way people experience the world. Companies need to have a data-driven approach in decision-making and overall process definition. However, some considerations such as the basic cost of hardware-software would benchmark the feasibility.

There are also other aspects such as the volume of data generated and its privacy. Invasion of privacy could be a sensitive issue and is of utmost importance. As an evangelist who has had the opportunity to work on multiple digital campaigns across different genres and interact with many marketers across diverse verticals, web security also has been a topmost concern.

Today's consumers, or shall we say the citizens, are full of conviction and are strongly vocal about their beliefs and would want to communicate, connect, engage and express on every little detail that surrounds them.

A very basic everyday-example of a great consumer experience would be Apple. It has revolutionized the way we use mobiles and has painted the canvas of the digital world with its products. Think of innovation and emerging technologies; think of how Google has mesmerized the entire world with its unique products and has led technologies that are not just building services but a complete ecosystem—cloud, software and hardware technologies, and information dissemination—in a unique manner.

Google Soli is the most recent innovation we see where radar technology is integrated with gesture sensors. Human gestures are applied to the virtual world. Radar-sensing technology is used to track micro motions or twitches of human hands. This talks about the very high positional accuracy of radar technology.

So the entire radar technology that works on planes and satellites are shrunk into a small chip.

https://atap.google.com/soli/

These are the digital giants or must we say, the 'thought leaders' of Digital Transformation. Therefore anyone can very well corroborate the basic essence of this medium and its popularity, and that everyone is so deeply connected to it that many would not have imagined the power and scale it could gather, and the momentum it has built.

Also, perhaps the most fascinating thing in this millennium will be the data patterns and footprints we embed through the evolution of such technological advancements, and how in turn this would be interlinked with the predictive technologies.

The conventional mediums, therefore, would wipe off gradually. Look how streaming media and video on demand have invaded the audiovisual platform. I would even say that television would soon become obsolete because not only is the entertainment industry evolving but so is our audience. We are soon to be stepping into 5G space, albeit with a few hiccups when it comes to on-ground limitations; especially for developing economies.

Imagine this merger envisaging and synergizing seamlessly with IoT, and soon the world would brace-up towards yet another paradigm shift.

What I see is a big roller coaster lined up across the horizon.

We are just getting started. Do you agree?

We call this next-generation Digital Transformation.

Well, scroll past what's cooking new, and you will have new jargon— blockchains, bitcoins, and quantum computing. We will come to that later. But let's first understand and decipher the digital medium and how we can make the most of it. I would want to expatiate from the perspective of a fundamentalist to make this entire exercise comprehendible so that almost anyone could connect to it and get a good understanding.

1.2 Why is it so Important to Learn Digital Marketing?

The world has hopped onto a speeding roller coaster that is leading to the gateway of transformation. In a couple of years, 90 % of the world will get online based on research. Are we ready?

The computing, connectivity, customization and cloud denomination changes and evolves based on factors such as cost optimization and bandwidth availability. The mere fascination and excitement we generate when we think of the world's most popular online platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, eBay, and YouTube et al., are enormous. The success they have generated leaves us aghast at the sovereignty and propensity of this medium.

The new generations, or should we say citizens, would soon be known as digital junkies or digital progenies. So whoever you are, whether you're an entrepreneur, a qualified homemaker, a business owner, student or a working professional, rest assured that to stay afloat and in fact to excel, you will have to master this trade.

First and foremost, if you were to ask me why you need to understand online marketing, in the simplest terms, my answers would be as follows:

a) For Generation-Y, learning the skillset will not only open many doors but also unravel many opportunities for you as a person.

b) It is a weapon that gives you many options to derive better productivity in day-to-day lives. You can build a better career opportunity, your business and a plethora of ideas to do something new.

c) If you are an entrepreneur, it will only help you scale your business regionally, nationally and globally. What's even more interesting is that you choose your audience and genre.

d) You could generate volumes of customers, converse with them, educate them about your product and engage them like never before.

1.3 Evolution of Advertising

There has been a drastic change in the way advertising has been perceived and looked upon in the last two decades.

The advertising world has witnessed changing interpretations where the consumer is the new king and the entire world revolves around the consumer.

E-Products: Creating value through online products.

There are two definitions of the term 'product' in the digital space. An online product can be a service or product that gets sold online. The other version is a brick-and-mortar version of the business that gets promoted through the online version.

An online interaction that makes up for a wonderful shopping experience makes up for a tangible value proposition that builds satisfaction among users. Consumers get choosy, read reviews, evaluate the competition and then make an organization. The ability of the web to provide the benefit of personalization motivates organizations to engage consumers to connect and build meaningful dialogues.

What's even more interesting is that brands can build and showcase their product attributes by generating content on a host of online websites, blogs, and social networks. There could be many factors contributing to the same such as convenience, choices, navigation, special offers.

Online communities are fast becoming excellent tools for operational and collaborative CRM leading to co-creation.

For example: Consider that you're booking a room for a vacation. While branding plays a major part in the highest recall, other differentiating factors such as ease of navigation on the property's website play a major part. There could also be other factors such as location value, printing extra and differentiation in terms of facilities, such as that for MakeMyTrip, agoda.com, etc.

1.4 Digital Marketing in the Contemporary Context

Think, Design and Conceptualize

Why do you need a digital strategy?

By now we have answers to the following questions:

• Why is the digital medium such an important one?
• How powerful could it be to show us the way ahead?

For most business verticals, bringing in digital marketing would help improve the efficiency of operations, advertising without any spillover, directly focusing on the audience most of the time in question, simultaneously bringing down and lowering the costs of data.

Digitizing the company or its business assets marks the radical shift towards automation, and consequently, a productive collaboration. This eventually maps up to the overall agility of an enterprise towards excelled productivity.

When you are a small business and the world gets increasingly competitive, identifying and winning over customers becomes a prerequisite. Hence it is important to meticulously plan and build a well-conceived 'digital' strategy. As you see, the perks are enormous and guarantee promising outcomes.

Retargeting and Consumer Behavior

The changing face of technology is being tailored based on personalization, and hence terms like hyper-targeted or hyper-personified may just serve to be the tip of the iceberg. There is much more when big data gets into play, betting big on psychographic factors and web-based behaviors. Imagine the influx when AI comes into full play.

The question is, are we ready?

Sample on Retargeting

We sit on an inflection point and technology is being completely redefined and accentuated at a phenomenal pace.

On the other hand, if you were to ask me to define the behavior of today's consumer, I would summarize it as 'Dynamic'. They are sharp-witted, multi-taskers, highly evolved and impulsive due to the number of choices coupled with state-of-the-art technology.

If you go back a bit, microchips revolutionized the human brain during the evolution of technology—it amplified the power of the human brain.

The Internet shrunk the world to one place. It, therefore, has also proved to be an important channel for people as well as businesses to provide information and offer direct sales to their customers.

Your identity is being sketched by your website, and it is the foremost signature of your existence. Evaluating the first touch-point as a prima facie window to the product can be of significant value. A website, in terms of its attributes such as navigation, accurate information, price savviness, and other things is of numerous and importance.

Therefore, the experience with your website can eventually decide customer loyalty, engagement, and preference. Online buying behaviors largely depend on factors such as site navigation, upload time, picture quality, variety of products, transaction friendliness, etc.