It is not longer the case that only “young” people are constantly staring down at their phones. If you look around yourself now, you’ll see people of all ages living their lives through their mobile device.
The mobile friendly update resulted in a lot of digital agencies telling their clients that they HAVE to have a responsive website now! I am sure for some that was a huge step, in fact there are still a number of businesses that haven’t bothered to adapt to the mobile world we live in.
What is about to come next is even bigger! Tech is ever evolving and is going to affect human behaviour in a number of ways, that even a couple of years ago we could never have imagined!
Today we will look at 5 shifts and the marketing adjustments that you need to be thinking about now!
Only the Fast Will Survive
We want to be fed information instantaneously! How long do you wait for a website to load?
Recent developments have reacted to how impatient we are when it comes to load times. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) along with Facebook Instant allows articles to load instantly within Google, Facebook or Twitter.
For marketers this means that traffic does not pass through to the site, it will actually stay within the framework of the network. What this means that it will be pretty difficult to gauge the impact of our content and making a case for the time and money spent on creating it.
Key Takeaways
- Marketers and businesses should embrace these changes – You can do this by making sure your website is marked up properly to qualify for instant articles.
- Consider changing key performance indicators from traffic to consumption. The most important thing is that people are consuming YOUR content! Not so much where they are doing that.
Reaching customers at the right place, the right time and importantly with the right message is what we all should be looking to do! Adapt! Don’t moan about the ever changing marketing landscape!
Voice Search-Talking Not Typing
Voice search, now bear with me on this one… is growing! Year on year for the past 3 years voice search has increased by 50%! Another bumpers stat to back up this claim is that 55% of teenagers and 41% of adults are now using voice search.
As it stands voice platforms are currently pulling search results from the same place as mobile and desktop. It has to be noted that voice search is somewhat different from how we type our search query.
- We use natural language with voice search
- Results are spoken back to us
There is an opportunity for increased visibility, targeting voice search. Marketers will create content that is better suited to voice search queries. Companies will begin to push data out to different apps like Siri, Cortana and Echo.
Key Takeaways
Perhaps the time is coming when you won’t need to have a website, why? As users will have no reason to visit it.
Spoken search queries will bypass what we see as traditional web content and instead utilise a database of proprietary data.
This market is up for grabs!
New Heights with VR
By 2020, approx 200 million VR headsets be in circulation! No longer is VR only for gamers, it could have a huge impact on commerce and how we view and make purchases.
Think about it:
- Shoppers can try on new clothes without leaving their living room.
- When looking for a new home you can take a tour of your new pad from a different country
- Sports and music fans can experience the event as if they are in the front row.
The challenge here in terms of marketing is that, VR adds yet another type of form into an already over populated mix.
Key takeaways
Okay… so VR is around 5 years away from being “mainstream” And if you are being pernickety the market is yet to decide if it will be accepted. From the initial hype there are a few things we can learn:
We need to make our content work harder. In the web space of the future posting blogs will no longer be enough.
We can’t be romantic with marketing channels. Right now Snapchat is huge and with less competition than other social marketing channels. We should be looking at ways to build a following before a space becomes too crowded.
Machines..They Are Coming
Right now we have two main types of AI, artificial intelligence on the market right now.
Machines
- The Model 3 from Telsa when on full auto pilot. Pre sale, around half a million units have been sold.
- Baxter, a robot that can learn tasks by watching you do them!
Software
- Chatbots, think Smarter Child
- Deep Learning, of course Rank Brain!
Facebook has been investing a fair chunk of time and money into chatbot. Mark and the gang think it is the future of content discovery and commerce.
Key Takeaways
IN the near future chatbots are going to help you run your business, improving efficiency! Fuffiling orders, customer service, replying to emails and dare i say it… create all of your content!
The job market will suffer however Bots will help you sell more product/service!
People will be asking there chatbot for all sorts of things, “best Italian restaurant near me” “best 50” tv” and so on.
So what this all means is that chatbots will take a rather large bite of search marketing. Why wouldn’t they? They provide an easy, personal service that also handles purchasing.
The chatbot race is currently led by Facebook, touting a combined 2 BILLION users worldwide on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
For the consumer chatbots are awesome! Each one of us will have our very own personal assistant!
For marketers, as the case always is, we will have to adapt. There will be a system that we can follow to improve visibility for our businesses in the chatbot world. A wealth of new opportunities!
What Does This All Really Mean?
The future looks bright for the consumer! All of these advancements in tech or software are going to make commerce a more enjoyable and pain freeish experience for the end user.
As a business to succeed in the coming future you are going to have to bend over backwards to get new and keep customers.
Marketers and businesses need to make their content work harder. Valuable content should be the cornerstone of your marketing strategy; every digital agency will tell you this.
Businesses succeeding in the future will be the ones that are creating cross channel content that engages customers in multiples dimensions.
A return to quality, phew! As a marketers or a business owner it is our job to create demand for a product or service. In the future you will be able to 3d print almost anything!
What’s left?
Quality!
Your marketing will be your brands story and the value you bring to your industry.
Start building you story today…
Guest Contributor: Robbie Allen – On my quest to be recognized as one of the best digital marketers in the UK. I blog about the tactics and strategies we use at Gecko. We have worked for corporations, charities and professional services, our approach always remains the same: how can we make our clients more money? www.wearegecko.com/
