The future of marketing is evolving rapidly in a post-pandemic world, forcing marketers to find ways to constantly appeal to the palate of the consumers. While the needs and wants of the consumer may not have drastically changed, the manner in which the consumer journey has evolved since the pandemic has been a major catalyst for marketers to unearth new practices, or tweak existing approaches. Following are some of the opportunities to latch on to stay ahead of the game in these evolving times.
1. Conversational Commerce: Conversational commerce is becoming a critical bridge for engagement between consumers and brands. While chatbots have been doing a phenomenal job of consumer engagement in terms of customer support, WhatsApp, with approximately two billion monthly active users has taken text based marketing to the next level. It is no longer just the instant messaging platform that it started out as but it also effectively reaches a massive base of potential consumers. All the key messenger apps have collectively become effective personalized platforms for engaging customer interactions. Once a marketer finds their sweet spot in using conversational commerce effectively, it can open up several other adjacent avenues to expand one’s customer base.
2. Niche Marketing: The days of TV or print marketing as a brand’s primary channel are well behind us. Niche marketing, that targets a specific area or audience segmentation, is all about knowing precisely who your audience are and what keeps them ticking. Ergo, niche marketing gives brands a leverage to maintain their assortment and reach consumers directly, thus augmenting the relationship with them. It is also a great way to sell a premium offering to a specific well-defined audience.
3. Personalization: Consumer loyalty is of paramount importance to any business in order to grow sustainably and profitably. Therefore, personalization to the segment of one, plays a fundamentally important role to improve the consumer’s experience with the brand and engagement. It allows a marketer to enhance not only the brand’s offerings but also how the consumer experiences the brand at every touchpoint that can aid brand loyalty in turn.
4. Interactive content: Interactive content marketing has a quality that makes it an essential element in companies’ marketing plans as it generates more conversions and rakes in more traffic than passive content does. Interactive content such as quizzes and polls, interactive videos & infographics, etc. will help in keeping the consumers engaged and also help you understand a bit more about the audience which is crucial for the business.
5. Predictive Analytics, Big Data & Deep Learning: Predictive analytics helps a brand stay ahead of the game as it helps in understanding the consumer’s needs and where the market is heading. This data-driven marketing allows a marketer to understand the impact a particular campaign created and accordingly devise future campaigns and optimize efforts. Nudging the right customer at the right moment in the purchase journey reaps great rewards.
Big Data & Deep Learning have been buzz words in the new-age marketer’s playbook since a while now. Big data is mammoth unstructured or structured data that can help a brand improve its products and offerings by understanding the consumer better while deep learning analyses and understands the data that helps a brand draw valuable conclusions on the way forward basis the past event. When combined together, these three tools can bring a deep-scientific approach to the marketing function and help brands future-proof themselves in many ways.
6. Community: Community marketing may sound like the newest buzzword around the block, but in reality has become a significant part of the consumer discovery process and also creates a sense of belonging which helps a brand enhance its already existing relationship with consumers. Identifying and associating with a community of influencers whose values and ethos match the brand’s values, aids a seamless consumer journey, be it physically or online. For marketers to stay a step ahead, community marketing is definitely an investment worth making.
This content was originally published here.