Preparing for incoming trends is the best way that a business, of any size, can stay afloat. With new, emerging technologies, the consumer experience is poised to be personalized in a manner that has not been seen before. The fact is that the offerings will be in real-time, as well as available everywhere. So, what is this new trend? Read on to find out.
The digital marketing world is about to enter a challenging territory. By building on the huge increase that has been brought on by the digital age, marketing strategies are heading toward the ability to be on demand, which means not always on, but also that it will always be responsive and relevant to the modern consumer’s desire for a marketing strategy that will cut through all the static to achieve pinpoint delivery.
Now the question may be what is fueling this change to on-demand marketing? The answer is the evolution of technology as well as the expectations of consumers. You already see the search engine technology that has allowed product information to be ubiquitous, mobile devices that provide a “wherever” and “whenever” dimension to the trending digital environment and social media that encourages each consumer to compare, rate and share their experience.
All of these changes are actually quickly becoming the “norm” and considered routine business. In fact the majority of leading marketers already know how to work through the needs of customer searches and work to optimize the search position that they have achieved. Additionally, there are millions of companies that have taken steps to ramp up their monitoring and publishing activities on various social channels in an effort to create an experience that is positive and that consumers will be spurred to share through social media platforms. In fact, new ways have been discovered to make posting favorable comments or reviews, or describing interaction with a brand, quick, easy and efficient for consumers.
The fact is, that this is just the beginning. These developments are leading to creating marketing experiences that will include the growing trend of mobile connectivity and creating superiorly designed spaces with the new and emerging HTML5.
All of these trends and advances are leading to the ability for consumers to be able to search by voice, gesture and image while participating with other users by making transitions or taking pictures. There are four main areas that these digital capabilities will multiply and consumer demands will actually rise, which include:
- Now: Consumers what the ability to interact with anything, from anywhere at any time.
- Can I: There is a demand for simpler ways to access information and therefore new methods of deployment are being implemented.
- For Me: The data that each consumer sees should be targeted to them, for their needs and used to provide a personalized experience.
- Simply: Consumers expect easy interactions.
There is one clear factor about consumer’s experiences with various categories and brands, which is that they are quickly becoming more defined and much more intense. This matters due to the fact that these are the experiences that will drive up to two-thirds of consumer’s decisions; the other deciding element is the actual price.
It is also an apparent factor that each business must take steps to mobilize high-quality experiences for their consumers in the fields of service, marketing, product use and sales. There are very few companies that can actually execute on this level as of today. As the interactions that a company has multiplies, they will need to use new techniques that have recently been introduced such as design thinking, which can shape the actual consumer experience. They also need to take time to become familiar with the emerging tools that are being used to gather the proper date across the entire consumer’s journey to a decision.
What’s Coming in 2020
In the next few years you are likely to witness a huge change in the consumer experience. This includes the virtual and physical environment. In fact, most of the technologies that are encouraging this new trend are available now, just not widely used. One advance that has gained traction recently is NFC, or near-field communication. These are embedded chips in certain phones that will exchange data when they come in contact with other objects that also contain an NFC tag. This is just one example of the new technologies that are being introduced to transform the entire consumer experience.
