In today’s post, we will shed light on few more trends put forward by IBM and its partners that will help you drive multiple initiatives for strengthening customer connections for driving business growth and exploring innovative business opportunities. Here’s a rundown of the marketing trends that are worth paying attention to:
- Center-brain Marketing Combines Creativity and Tech to Drive Success in a Machine Learning-Driven Future: Marketing was traditionally considered as a right-brain activity; however, marketing is also a left-brain activity that is driven by cognitive technologies, data, and analytics. Marketing will soon be under the control of left-brain people who utilise artificial intelligence and machine learning for making crucial marketing decisions. With the concept of center-brain marketing, both technology and left-brain technical people will function together with right-brain creative thinkers to attain success in a machine learning-driven future.
Centre-brain marketing transformation makes use of technology, strategy, processes and people to make sure your organization is reaping the benefits of machine learning and left brain analytics while enabling right-brain creativity to generate the kind of revolutionary marketing that can propel the success of customers along with brand preference. Cognitive technologies will drive the future of marketing and companies lacking the right processes and workforce will be overshadowed by higher-performing business rivals. To know more, watch this video:
- Interactive email will empower new e-commerce opportunities: Email is the ideal platform for e-commerce conversion as it delivers the highest relevance along with well-timed content to your target audiences. Since email requires recipients to click through for completing an action, marketers are now counting on HTML Commerce which will enable marketers to sell directly from within HTML emails. It no doubt, requires some effective coding and the task of populating some dynamic content to cater to individual recipients but it offers outstanding opportunities. You should always keep in mind that your email database is the most crucial asset of your business; therefore, you should come up with smart strategies to drive significant growth for your company. Watch this video to know more:
- The astounding growth of dark data is motivating marketers to maximize their existing data: Dark data refers to the unstructured data acquired via different computer networks. It is the data accumulated, processed and stored by organizations for conducting daily business activities but are left unused as the executives are unable to make sense of it due to lack of proper tools. According to data analysts, by the year 2020, the digital universe will be 40 times bigger due to the significant increase of dark data. The marketers find this data explosion quite overwhelming as they are not prepared to tackle the challenges that their business is about to face owing to this outburst of data.
In 2017, marketers will emphasize more on making sense of the available data instead of capturing more of it. The focus will be on finding buying patterns, insights and behaviours in the available data.
Leading companies will count on the following five Vs of dynamic data—
- Volume: to determine how much data needs to be measured.
- Variety: to determine the variety of data required from different channel and how much of it is actually valuable.
- Velocity: to determine how fast your customer data travels.
- Veracity: to determine the accuracy of data.
- Value: to ensure that you capture useful data and also create more value for your consumers.
These 5 Vs will inspire marketers to feel less overwhelmed and more confident about their business as they will be prepared to handle big data explosion. To know more, watch this video:
- Mobile Apps are Changing the Face of Mobile Communication: Behaviour of mobile customers is changing rapidly. Today users download lesser number of mobile apps as they are moving to core apps. Moreover, at present times, brands do not consider apps as mere icons, but utilities that can have a significant impact in the daily lives of customers. To keep up with this trend, app developers are including their services– normally found within their exclusive app environment—through AI assistants, mobile operating systems, and other apps. For example, Uber is one such app that has been incorporated into Google Assistant, Allo, iMessage, Alexa, etc. To begin with, digital marketers should find out the platforms where their customers prefer spending maximum time. Social media platforms and messaging apps are some of the places digital marketers can consider. To know more, watch the following video:
- Smart marketers are pursuing a comprehensive view of customers’ journey to transform customer experience: In 2017, digital marketers will be taking all possible measures to offer customers with outstanding experiences by taking into account the comprehensive view of the customer journey. Smart marketers are leveraging advanced technology to analyse customer journey so that they can identify different issues and work together with their teams to resolve the issues. Moreover, organizations are also trying to comprehend why certain customers take certain actions during their journey with a specific brand. To offer exceptional customer experience, marketers are aligning all the departments of an organization, from billing and shipping to sales and customer service so as to create interactions of superior quality across all channels. Moreover, brands have been also giving priority to customer data for understanding customer journey. Having access to customer data is the best way to get insights about customer journeys.
Besides these marketing trends, few bonus trends have been put forward by IBM’s partners.
- Chatbots will gain momentum across industries: Chatbots can not only modernize transactions but also make the process of consumer interactions more efficient. Chatbots can be deployed across any messaging channel including Skype, WeChat, SMS, Facebook Messenger, and email. This year, marketers will focus more on the distinctive functionalities of chatbots so as to improve the process of interaction with new as well as existing customers.
- Marketers will focus more on automation and personalization: Marketing automation along with data-driven personalization is currently revolutionizing email marketing. This year, most of the brands will be emphasizing more on targeted messaging for increasing ROI.
- Performance-driven organizations will incorporate cognition and operationalisation into customer journey mapping: Customer journey mapping is a great way to comprehend customers’ perspectives as it helps businesses to cater to the requirements of their customers. It entails the creation of a visual map of the different ways in which customers connect with businesses all the way through the buying cycle. Moreover, it also motivates companies to achieve their business objectives for individual customers. This year, businesses will shape the customer experience by operationalizing customer journey maps. It means integrating the maps into the CRM platforms used by sales and customer service. Besides this, businesses will also incorporate cognitive capabilities to enhance customer engagement throughout customers’ journey and across the sales, marketing and service departments of an organization delivering that journey.
Conclusion:
By inculcating the trends, insights and tactics put forward by IBM and its partners into your marketing strategy, you can successfully go beyond the expectations of their customers. Smart brands follow a holistic approach to enhance customer experience. By analysing your current performance and by identifying the problem points that need improvement so as to delineate a plan of action, you can go a long way in redesigning customers’ journey.
