The past few years have witnessed drastic changes in the technologies adopted by marketers seeking to enhance the visibility and brand perception of their products. With most of the competing brands adopting similar digital marketing techniques, the real challenge is to identify a unique strategy that creates a distinguished brand proposition for the product. Thus marketers are constantly finding some innovative ways through online marketing tools to engage their customers.
In the present day, marketers are focused on Digital Marketing methods which includes the use of devices such as tablets, smart-phones, digital billboards, TV, SEO, email etc. Digital marketing is a vast umbrella with numerous marketing technologies accessible under this term. The following are a few ongoing digital marketing trends that are winning favor from advertisers.
Location based Marketing:
Claimed to be the most dominating digital marketing trend in the year 2014, location-based marketing has revolutionized the entire definition of digital marketing. This geographically enabled marketing process uses GPS technology for delivering the multimedia content straight to the customer’s mobile device, based on their geographical location. This marketing technology is best suited for small businesses that wish to enhance their awareness levels. However, many big brands are also using this technology as it helps their loyal customers to locate the company’s nearest outlet while on the move. This is a very effective tool in marketing as the marketers can segment their customers based on the geography and can target their customers according to the preferences of a particular area. Further, the markets can maintain a substantial customer base (marketing with numbers) which ultimately helps the company to forecast their sales more efficiently.
Also location based marketing services offer a great deal to the consumers using mobile wallets, such as the Google Wallet. However, the Marketers need to ensure that the local listing is up to the mark. Local listing involves positioning information in Google+ Local, Yelp, FourSquare etc. For the effective implementation of location based marketing, marketers should properly define the goals of their marketing campaign, as there are various subcategories available within location based marketing and these include Location triggered advertisement, Location Based Social Media, check-in based contests and games, local search advertising, proximity marketing.
This market is growing with the help of big players such as CitySearch, Dex, Yellow Pages, Google Places, Yahoo Local, AroundMe, Yelp, Twitter, Facebook Foursquare, Groupon, etc. Moreover the market seems promising even for small players and startups in the consulting space for digital marketing.The other important tools of digital media includes social media marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing etc.
Social Media Marketing:
The list of websites include Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Myspace etc. Social media has now turned itself into a reliable platform for purchase decisions. Consumers are considering social media as place of trust to go forward with their purchasing activities. It has bridged the gap between the consumers and their purchase decision.
Video Marketing:
It’s believed that video messages are 10 times more powerful than text messages. It’s a proven method for driving sales online. Also based on the latest surveys, it is seen that there is an increase in the number of YouTube video watchers. However, when it comes to video ads, out of curiosity, we take a look at the ad, at least once. That is the power of video marketing!
This is the reason why marketers are constantly working on TV commercials and YouTube ads because for some time the brand gets registered in the minds of the consumers.
Content Curation: It is the process of collecting, organizing and displaying information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. To implement content curation, several free and paid tools are available online such as NetVibes.com, Feedly.com, ProtoPage.com and Google Sites etc. This process of data curing or data refining is another important trend to be followed by the marketers in the upcoming years.
However in the recent years, we can see many automated versions of these tools, such that the marketers can automate the repetitive task and concentrate more on innovative ideas so that the brand can capture a major share of the market. Also the market seems promising for such tools in digital marketing and many startups have started catering to the marketing needs of big players in different industries.
Therefore while using these tools Marketers should be careful regarding their Brand Associations, and should select the tools in which their brand looks distinguished and prominent and the brand association is not cluttered with other competing brands,
However, marketers choosing digital media need to exercise caution in order to ensure that their brand which is marketed through digital medium does not end up into ignorance because of the presence of too many brands. Hence, they should use a digital media that would be most effective in reaching out to the target group instead of using multiple mediums. After all, all it takes to make a lasting impression is one effective trick.
This Blog is written by Lekha Gyanchandani, Sr Analyst with DART Consulting
