Marketing is a constant effort to adapt to the consumer’s evolving wants and needs. The future is digital, and technology only continues to embed itself deeper into our daily lives. Innovative technologies emerge weekly, and it can be tedious for marketers to identify what is the future and what is a fad. This article will break down the three trending components to focus on when planning for the future with digital marketing.

Personalization

The first thing to understand about the future of digital marketing is how to reach an audience. Television has fallen to the wayside as an efficient marketing tool in 2020, considering the impact of the internet and social media in recent years. Even in the early 2000s, advertisement agencies invested in the future of personalization and targeting a specific demographic. On social media, users can create their bubble, filtering what content they wish to see and what they choose to ignore. Hyper-focusing on your audience and creating marketing materials specific to their interests is more compelling than generalized adverts. Initially, social media was only a place to reach younger audiences ranging from age 16-25, but over the last five years, it has adapted to be inclusive to all. Spend time to identify where your audience spends the most time online, what are common interests among your audience, and what general behaviors they have towards specific advertisements.

Data-driven Marketing

Data-driven marketing is a crucial method to develop marketing methods for the future, identify specific demographics, and gain information on your audiences’ behavior. In an age of information, data-driven methods have found their place in most marketers’ toolkit. More often than not, marketers see a significant ROI when developing marketing campaigns that utilize this tool. Anyone who uses social media has willingly agreed to share their information, not only with the platform they use, but also thousands of advertisements agencies. More information is shared and collected online than most realize, and taking advantage of this can lead to prosperous results. As I explained previously, the consumer no longer wishes to view generic, mass appeal advertisements. There is no lack of information available on the internet, and just about anyone can make assumptions based on what they find. The smart marketer will use previous data collected from their audience to predict trends for the future and implement campaigns that align with the consumers’ interests. A misconception is that data-driven marketing will streamline your marketing efforts, but in reality, it adds complexity. How you handle the information and the marketing materials you produce afterward will be the indicator of success.

Video Marketing

Interactive media is the most dominant form of entertainment currently, ranging from video games to social media. Amid the fluidity of modern technology, short-form video content has seen a boost in impact with audiences. Take advantage of the two previously mentioned trends to shape the direction of video content used in marketing efforts. As stated, generalized advertisements are less effective in the modern era and can do more harm than good. Once the behaviors and interests of the target demographic are identified, begin producing video content that reflects those. Video production can be costly, so having a clear plan of action and vision are crucial to saving time and staying on track. Video marketing has become extremely popular for two reasons. First, videos can be handcrafted to cater to a specific audience with a much greater ROI than static images. Second, videos have massive versatility in where they can be implemented. A lot of websites offer ad spaces where your videos can be embedded, benefiting the website host and your own company. Social media is the leading platform for video marketing, as it can be done first-hand or passed off to an agency that specializes in social media marketing. Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter offer ad spaces that appear in between a users’ regular content, and when done right, yields promising results. Social media is going nowhere, and short-form video content is projected to be the preeminent form of marketing in years to come.

The future of marketing is an empathetic one-on-one approach, even if you never have an interpersonal interaction with your demographic. Between AI, data-driven marketing, and influencers, the next generation has no interest in adverts that do not apply directly to their lifestyle. The main factor that drives all of these marketing techniques is engagement and conversion, a metric that television has failed to measure in its long life span.