How to Prepare for the Future of Digital Marketing

How to Prepare for the Future of Digital Marketing

Twenty West Media > Blog > Marketing > How to Prepare for the Future of Digital Marketing

The growth of technology has pushed digital marketing to new limits in how we can target our audience. From 2009, when Facebook started to gain its popularity, to now in 2021 there’s been a massive shift in how we market our products or services to people and it’s going to continue in the future. During the next few years our focus should be centered around advanced chatbots, optimized voice chat, shoppable social posts and others that we’ll discuss. Let’s start by mentioning the power of advanced chatbots and why they will be useful in the future.

Moving forward, artificial intelligence is developing in sophisticated ways which will impact both customer support and marketing channels. Chatbots weren’t that effective in the past, but as technology grows, we’ll be able to use them to help answer your audience’s questions. Another strength of an AI Chabot is that they’re available 24/7 which means you don’t need to be available full time to answer every question from your audience. A recent study done by Facebook found that 56% of people would rather get a quick instant message than call a support line. This shows that the consumer wants an immediate answer and has a low tolerance for waiting. Learning about chatbots and how to use them allows you to close sales faster and move on to the next potential client.

If you’re in the e-commerce business, using shoppable social posts is key not just now, but for the future. The newest data reveals that on Instagram 130 million clicks are on shoppable ads every month. These statistics show how powerful these types of ads are and will continue to grow in numbers.  These ads allow your customers to purchase your products seamlessly which contributes to increased sales volume.

Using voice to communicate with devices has grown the past few years with tools such as smart speakers’ personal assistants and Siri. A study by Search Engine Watch found that 27% of internet users use voice search on their smartphones. This statistic is bound to grow with the increasing popularity of smart devices. A trick to optimize voice-activated SEO is to focus on ranking for long-tail keywords (try to have less than four words in length) for your keywords. Using voice to communicate through our smart devices might not be all that common, but with the growth of technology and more people purchasing them, looking to optimize voice for your SEO should be on your radar.

This next tool is still quite a few years away, but it’s sure going to have an impact on the digital marketing space in the future. That is having ads in a virtual reality format (augmented reality). This may seem like a long reach to think about, but a study by MarketsandMarkets research in 2018 found that the virtual reality market was at 7.9 billion and is expected to grow to 53.6 million in 2025. There is plenty of potential with video games using VR to play games and various apps are using augmented reality to show off their products. Also, various car companies are using virtual reality to advertise their cars. Volkswagen, for example, has used this type of advertising. Click on the link to learn more about how they used it to their advantage. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/pinterest-launches-new-virtual-test-drive-ad-experience-with-volkswagen/601775/. Virtual reality not only gives the consumers a 360-degree interactive experience, it also brings them closer to the product than ever before.

These tools are just a few ideas that you should keep an eye on for the future. Digital marketing, as we know, changes every 6 months whether it’s a new update added to our social media platforms or a new social media app. I feel it’s better to always be ahead of what’s coming in the digital marketing industry. This is because your audience will be more keen to see which type of content you’re going to post that other companies haven’t yet implemented.