I would like to begin with a farewell. Farewell to the world of traditional marketing as we have come to know it, and to which we are now saying good-bye. The remnants of that world are still fluttering around us, trying to cling to the old platforms and habits of marketers. Yet, in the wake of many years of “transition”, we are currently moving towards that tipping point after which the marketing and advertising industry will work and behave entirely differently.
The new structure of the marketing field stands on the following cornerstones which are different from those we have known and were used to for years. This chapter briefly describes the anchors / terms that should be taken into account when considering marketing moves in the new era.
Relations
In the digital age where the consumer has more alternatives and less time, the method of one-way communication has suffered a lethal blow. The brand’s singularly aimed shout to get the consumer’s attention is no longer effective. A brand has to be committed to creating a relationship with its target audience. A relationship based on familiarity, value and listening. Without these, effective marketing activity cannot exist.
Conversions
In order to establish relationships, brands need to establish a permanent digital presence that will serve as its “meeting point” with its customers – a website, a mobile application, a brand blog, social networking arena, a YouTube brand channel, and so on. A means of meeting and creating the necessary relationship with potential customers. From the moment that meeting point is in place, dealing with customers’ needs involves the four following stages:
- Conversion A – from people to visitors. At this stage, the brand wishes to bring as many people as possible to visit its digital assets.
- Conversion B – from visitors to users. The task at this step is to convince visitors to get involved in your assets. This can be done through signing up for the site, joining the brand on Facebook, or joining its community on Instagram or Twitter. This marks the first sign of a potential relationship.
- Conversion C – from friends / users to customers. This step looks to change users to customers. In other words, take out your wallet….
- Conversion D – at this stage we go the extra mile and try to convince our friends or customers to become brand promoters. Promoters who will help us distribute our content, talk about our product and convince their friends to follow suit.
Digital marketing is largely based on these four conversion stages, with each stage based on a detailed and quantified work plan. In other words: It’s all about conversions.
Permission
In the digital age, the consumers have the power. When it comes to content, shopping, community services, etc., they have multitude of options. They find a way to ignore marketing messages that threaten to overwhelm them. We are approaching a point where any marketing initiative will potentially be subject to permission alone. If a brand fails to receive permission to market – its message will not be accepted.
The good news is that brands have many points of permission – convincing the consumer to download their app or sign up for their website, follow the brand on social network, or sign up for its blog – will be considered permission. At this point, the brand becomes “marketing authorized” with reasonable listening potential.
Value
As part of the need to establish a relationship with consumers, brands have to provide customers with a real, customized value. One that will be relevant to the target audience and convince it to be involved. In the digital age, the dialog between brand and consumer cannot be based solely on the product you are trying to sell. There has to be an added value – usually expressed in the content world that the brand provides its customers.
Simultaneous Usage
The digital natives – those who were born from the 1980s onward into the digital age, have adopted the use of multiple devices and platforms simultaneously. They skip from using their computer to their smartphone and from there to their tablet. They jump from talking on WhatsApp to virtual meetings on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and music and the like. It is difficult to catch them in one place and therefore brands need to create a constant presence on all devices and platforms.
Micro Clusters/activities/budgets
Smart brands no longer speak in terms of broad reach and frequency of exposure as was the practice in the time of traditional marketing. The up-to-date way to create a market dialog is to define a micro segment – a focused, characterized human cluster, and reach it through micro-publishers – small and characteristic media – such as bloggers or YouTubers who will not bring your advertising message to millions but will link your brand to a small and attentive audience, all with a relatively small and controlled budget. In other words, the efficient formula abandons the mass media that targets millions and instead directs the budget to moves that define micro-segments and uses micro-publishers. A long tail of small, efficient and measurable activities.
Gatekeepers / Influencers
Reaching your target audience entails listening. Traditional media do not guarantee listening. People who influence people, readers loyal to their blogger, followers influenced by unofficial leaders – all have turned the media field into a long line of small players that will bring your message to the desired audience.
FOC / Tribes
A friend who recommends a product influences us much more than any advertisement, even if he is not a close friend. We are all influenced by networks of unknown people on social media. A brand that succeeds in penetrating these circles of social influence and / or groups opens its door to members of the tribe and enjoys an organic distribution of its marketing message – assuming it carries value for its members.
Emotional Marketing
Terms such as: Engagement marketing /Experiential marketing /Event marketing /On-ground marketing – are becoming a very important element in brands’ marketing activities.
This is a marketing and advertising campaign aimed at clearly defined audiences which is supposed to help the brand create a range of emotions among potential customers that will support goals such as remembering, sympathy, prominence, developing a relationship between the brand and its customers, who’re leaning towards buying.
The Passionate Segment
The next few years will see most marketers abandoning some of their target audiences in favor of marketing for one – the passionate segment – those who crave the category, those who try its products, read every article published on it, talk about other related products and distribute the content they receive from the category brands. These are the best, most loyal customers – and most importantly it is up to you to turn them into your brand promoters. Focusing on this one segment will earn you the best ROMI – Return On Marketing Investment, serving as the basis for all your digital marketing activities. Social Marketing activity will help you locate and mark these important people.
Social Proof of Quality- SPOQ
A super term that describes all channels in which people influence others in their purchasing decisions and preference of a product or service. In the digital age, “social density” – positively of course – is worth more than any advertising campaign. It serves as a quality signal. Research shows that 77% of people read users’ feedback before making their shopping decision. Now it’s time for brands to join in and include it in their marketing plan.
Generation Y/Z
The Millennial generation – the first generation born to digital – is the most important one for brand and media companies. Both this and the previous generation create a different, elusive consumer profile – with less television watching, limited loyalty to brands, they demand sharing of products and content, impatient and less tolerant of unpleasant buying experiences, and require both transparency and involvement.
Both young generations – Y and Z – are similar in the hurdles they create for brands and media companies, yet there are significant differences between them.
Overlapping / Native Advertising
Two types of advertising formats have been dominant (and still are) throughout the years: the first one is Break (advertising before and after content, i.e., on TV) and the second one is – Nearby (advertisement next to content – i.e., in the press). These two formats are about to disappear from our lives. They are no longer effective. Digital native users have long ago found the way to ignore these formats which are about to be replaced by “overlapping” – a format where content and brand come together to provide value to the user. This format is usually expressed in content produced by the brand, focusing on providing branded value to a defined micro-segmented audience.
Shakable Ads
Studies show that the generations Y and Z have no time for ads. The only way to win a reasonable chance of gaining their attention is to produce short ads of maximum five seconds long. It is not easy to convey a message in such tight constraints but it is possible. More importantly – it is necessary. By the way, if you are looking for a unique start-up idea, you could set up a creative agency (with technological capabilities) that specializes in producing video ads of up to five seconds.
The Age of Discovery
Looking at the evolution of the media in recent decades, it all began with us learning almost everything through it. We got to know about new fashions, business opportunities, the state of the economy, news, sports, gossip, and so forth from the traditional media. Then came Google, which told us not to wait for the media to find out about it but use its search engine to do the work for us – that was the age of searching. Then came social networks that brought with them social discovery – which enables us to collect information and content while hanging out in social networks. We learn about the world from our social friends and their friends’ friends. So if a brand is looking to be relevant and to control some information, it should be highly active in the social networks. Don’t advertise there. Live there.
Message Visualization
The young generations lead a communication model based on visuals – images, animations and mainly video clips. These constitute the main formats that lead the discourse, sharing and distribution. Brands should take that into account when designing their work plans.
AR
Augmented reality technology (much more so than virtual reality) has become a significant tool for marketers and brands:
Promoting business on the street, integrating game elements to connect a brand with consumers, adding elements that enable a remote experience of the product, expanding information about a product at a sale point, etc. – all render the old technology meaningless in the work plans of businesses and brands.
The Age of Voice
Voice search, voice-based interaction between consumer and brand and other voice-based services are now becoming the industry’s leading user interface format. Here, too, brands need to be ready and targeted on upgrading their relationship with customers and consumers.
Pronsumers
The digital age has made us all into two-headed creatures – we are simultaneously producers and consumers of content at the same time. We consume content but at the same time know and want to contribute content and influence our friends on the net. Brands should allow us to contribute content on their assets. This is a basic condition in building relations between brands and potential customers.
Chat Bot
A Chat Bot is actually a computer program that performs a defined task automatically. Bots can collect information for you from various sources, can answer questions, advise you, and of course help you in an efficient and fast online shopping process. This effective format could substitute or add to the mobile application activity of brands, which are already active. Leading brands claim that it is easy for them to produce bots and ride on existing platforms of social networks such as Facebook or messaging platforms like Viber. The development as well as the marketing processes are simpler.
Blockchain / Crypto
The next revolution will be based on a technological player who will create a new tool to form relationships in the digital world – Cryptocurrency. This is currency created with technological means whose value is not determined by that of a commodity or a central body but rather by agreement between a network of users (Bitcoin, Ripple, etc.).
This technology opens a significant playground for media companies and advertisers to initiate a reward-based dialog with consumers. Media companies will be able to reward content producers as well as loyal readers, and brands will be able to reward those who followed their advertisement to the end – all with currencies in an utmost reliable and secure system.
Programmatic/Automatic
Content creation, campaign management, brand social activity management – all are automated. This reduces costs, increases control and analytical possibilities, and above all allows brands to bring all their systems together for absolute budget management and especially data. This trend will make some Eco System players irrelevant.
Visual Search
The next generation of search engines is based on visualization of information.
Information is based on the visual study of objects and currently visual search is led by Google. The use is friendly and simple – you turn your camera to the object you are after online or in your actual surrounding and get the relevant information.
The End of Creativity
Targeting and reaching micro audiences questions the place of creativity, that for many years has been the central backbone of the life of the traditional advertising agency. If a brand is capable of accurately reaching a potential customer while perfectly understanding his needs, desires and consumer profile, there is apparently no need for all that hoo-ha. The targeted offer will do a better job.
“And what about brand image creativity”? Some will ask. Following super brands of the digital age will prove that they have positioned themselves by providing value rather than through traditional creativity. Does anyone remember the fancy slogan of Facebook or Google?
Fast Brands
Forget about fast food. Think instead about fast brands. They are the ones which will lead the market. Fast brands should work quickly in all fields:
Quick intelligence creation
Quick creation of a relationship with consumers (who should understand their benefit and value)
Fast / Quick navigation options within brands’ digital assets / digital stores
Fast purchase (zero or one click purchasing)
Quick delivery
Quick response (customer relations)
Fast circulation within the community (converting Customers to Promoters)
Marketology & Createology
Creative and marketing people now need to have a new set of skills. Skills that are expressed in their technological understanding, or, in other words – how can lightweight and accessible technologies be used to properly package a brand.
The End of Spray & Pray
Creation and dispersion, or in other words, creativity and spraying here and there, with no definite focus and value, has come to an end. Whatever is not targeted, quantified, relevant, or cannot bring value to a distinct and clear audience, is being replaced by a clear-cut activity based on providing value and maintaining a relationship between brands and customers.