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The future marketing like everything else today is impacted by technology. Most people today have no idea how much information on them is changing marketing to them. In the future marketing, companies will use AI. VR and augmented reality to build marketing for them specifically based on what they do and did.
Today, we’re going to continue from a previous episode where we talk more about what was going on with sales and the sales process. Let’s talk a little bit more now about the technology and the future that’s coming up as well as what is existing today and what we have to look for.
Now, to carry on a little bit from last week, we talked about social media, sort of the final part, the final cut. With social media, you can, today, build relationships and build relationship with people who are influencers in your area or your field, as well as people who may potentially be influencers within the sales process of your business, of your product, but relationships can’t be abused. There are some approaches that are really weird and they reek of the time when people thought that they could do it with business cards.
There was actually even some car dealer or something or a used car salesman. He used to talk about and teach people how to just buy tons of business cards and leave them all over the place. Throw them places, et cetera, and it’s almost like we have some of those people out there. As you’ll notice in social media whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera, you go and make a contact and somebody sends you back an immediate message saying, “Oh, here’s what I do and here’s what I’m selling. Are you interested?” Well, that’s today considered very obnoxious. It’s annoying and while it might work once in a while and will cause stories to be told about how I did this. Some will say I generated sales without thinking. It’s the without thinking part that really is troublesome because it’s not going to build a good business.
What will build a business today, and future marketing? Of course, more and more so, it’s customer service. Customer service now is always on. Think of not just like your instant TV but it’s always on. Customers have access today to more information from other customers, as well as ratings, et cetera, some of it false. You have to monitor things for that reason. It’s why you often hear that buyers are right now considered to be 65%, two-thirds of the way through the sales process because of research before they even reach out to the sales person in your company or any of the company for your product or competitive product. That number is expected and will probably grow easily to 85 plus percent. How do you get ready?
That tells us two things. Sales is rapidly removing the salesperson. What is it replaced by? Customer service, information, the things that make your company and your product more attractive and how comfortable that person is. Get back to building that relationship with existing, as well as potential customers. Today, you can already geotarget to such an extent. You are, say, a real estate agent in a particular area, you don’t need to blast in advertisement into the newspaper. A car dealer doesn’t have to blast an advertisement into the newspaper. They can actually target people who are interested in cars and thinking about buying a car based on social media characteristics that already exist within their very targeted market area.
Technology is changing even more and those changes are going to accelerate quite a few things. Before I talk about what they will accelerate, keep in mind why you need to be interested in this tech that’s coming out. Don’t say, “Well, I’m having trouble keeping up,” because quite frankly, this technological change that’s occurring gives you or your competitors the opportunity to substantially increase market share, become closer to the customer, and possibly step in front of you in the line of information that the customer’s seeking.
Now, for quite a while in the past, it was looked as that social media was basically free. It’s becoming a little bit less free. Yes, there’s lots that you can get and lots you can do to position yourself well in the free areas but you also, when you start hitting the different channels, you see that there’s more pay for play. You take a look at Facebook. Now, you can say, “Yeah, but I can avoid that by doing certain things.” Well, Facebook is getting better and better as is Google and the others are to almost force you to start paying more and more so, which is again, one of the reason why you want to be on the frontend of technology as opposed to trying to catch up and having to expend much more in money for some of the existing things that you might be getting today in recognition.
That gets to the idea of ads. Ads can’t be the same as ads used to be and it’s certainly changing very rapidly, more information based. Again, you’re attracting and you’re supplying information rather than blasting, “Hey, buy my product. I’m the cheapest one, or I’m the best one,” et cetera, which is very few people may believe anyway. You can also though reach a wider audience and a more targeted audience. Now, I talked about the targeting, the geotargeting, the wider audience. The internet, as we’ve discussed many times throughout two years we’ve been doing the podcast, is now your market. It used to be thought as the sidewalk traffic. This traffic walking by your store back in the days and everybody was concerned about foot traffic. Well, now, your foot traffic is internet traffic, which is around the world if that is appropriate for your product or service.
Now, you have to do a variety of things to attract the people and certainly, you want to have video content, which is the thing today. You want to be able to make sure that, as I mentioned last week, mobile is becoming the center. You also want transparency because that’s going to build and breed that brand customer relationship and loyalty. You’re also going to see in a new situation where it’s going to be user generated. That is the customer themselves will generate the content that they want to get.
Social is going to become … Well, it’s already in a sense, the internet but it’s going to become more so. The internet, because people searching will be searching opinions of other people and of other customers. You take a look at websites on Google, et cetera, you go search for the opinions of a product, the reviews. If you look deeper into the first 10 listings that are there, often those are really related to the company or related to the competitors. In a sense, they’re not like consumer reports or CNET or something else that’s giving you possibly an unbiased viewpoint.
Brands are becoming more focused, of course, data driven marketing, but it’s becoming much more refined. I mean I was looking back when I was originally doing data analysis and data extraction and merging databases, et cetera. It was off mainframes and really rudimentary compared to what it is today. Now, it’s so refined but it’s even going to be so much more refined when you add on things like artificial super intelligence, AI. Research and development in those areas and virtual reality and augmented reality. Now, what does that do? Well, advertising’s going to be personalized, very, very personalized based on what you need and think. You’ll be looking for something and it will be addressed by what your actions have been over the recent past, be shown ads when it’s most relevant to you.
Now, think of what this means. It’s already there right now. If a woman is searching for a wedding or engagement, et cetera, she becomes a target. She becomes a target for all the wedding and marriage and engagement industry.
The next step, a combination of what your estimated or probably income is based on your characteristics and your job and position and maybe the age of your cars or your fleet, maybe the family characteristics and realizing that one of your cars is a certain age. You are expecting a baby and they have information on your household fleet, now all of a sudden you may need a van or something else and you start seeing things, not as the typical ad but possibly you’ll start seeing articles and other information, videos created just for you.
Discussion on social media shows your interest. Maybe you’re interested in fresh produce. Articles start appearing. How easy it is to have a garden, maybe an indoor hydroponic garden so you have it all year round.
Now, you have to start thinking of these things even if you yourself can’t create them but you can remember from last week. I talked about one of the ways you build up a customer experience, as well as loyalty, is to start doing demos and other things to show how your product is better used, taken care of, little things are fixed, et cetera. Whatever else it is but you have to start building that and then, over time you’ll see these other things slide into view. You have to be aware that these things are going to slide in and as they slide into the sales process, you have to be able to either take advantage of them, reach out and use things that you already have done to augment them.
Then, if you take a look at one of these videos based on those inputs, that is if you watch it, listen to it or like it, the next video is created on the fly for you for something related or the next step or stage. You’re going to go to certain places and that’s going to create a profile for you. All that stuff that you’re being tracked on with your phone, with your computer, et cetera, giving Amazon or all the other apps and Facebook and Instagram your location, they know where you are, they know where you’ve been, so they know what you like. That is all going to be there in the next stage I’m describing here.
If you’ve gone to certain places, complementary interests, other things related to that, maybe the clothes to buy will start being recommended or to how this is adaptable for certain types of leisure. If you happen to like to sit and watch football games or sit and watch baseball games or like to go to concerts, things including clothes that are appropriate for that, tools or tech or gear to make it a better experience or easier to do whatever. There’s going to be more social and multi device tracking than we already even have and there already is so much. It’s going to become the new norm and marketing technology allows companies and brands to control more and more and to present you based on brand awareness and marketing. You have to be thinking in terms of those new flows of data.
Instagram is becoming full of activity for brands and people alike. Pinterest also is, which was always thought of as sort of the woman, 80% woman, et cetera. However, it’s more and more becoming much greater than just women. All of these will happen and as these realities take place, augmented reality, virtual reality, it will mean more possibilities and more fronts in the marketing world with the future marketing.
I hope you’re enjoying this series and it’s going to continue to grow as the next several stages … I originally said there was eight then I split marketing into two, so now, there’s nine. That’s good. It’s kind of an odd number. Hopefully, I’ll restrict it to that but I really want people to be stimulated and thinking of how this relates and will relate to your own business. Stay up to date. Go to lifeunsettled.com and take advantage of receiving updates of whenever these episodes are coming out.
Thank you very much.
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