Marketing Objectives

Marketing objectives are simply the brand’s goals for the campaign (Lang, n.d.). Setting objectives provides the framework for what needs to be achieved during the campaign. It makes it easier to determine what needs to be done to reach the goals. A few examples of marketing objectives are increasing brand awareness, increasing website traffic, increasing sales, and increasing engagement rates. Once the objectives of the campaign are identified, the company is then able to determine what tactics will be used to accomplish the objectives. The tactics could include posting on each platform a certain number of times each week or replying to customers’ reviews and comments on Facebook a few times per day.

The objectives of the campaign should be determined by what the company wants to accomplish and what their mission is. For example, if a company is brand new and is offering a product that already exists and has a market, the company probably needs to increase brand awareness so that customers know the new brand exists. If a company is already established but their market share is low, they may need to revamp their website to bring in more traffic.

For an objective to be effective, it must be a SMART goal. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant (Lang, n.d.). So, for the new company that needs to increase brand awareness, the SMART goal would look like this: Increase brand awareness by posting on Instagram four times per week for three months. This goal is clear, concise, and would provide the company with analytics that would show who is viewing the content, how often the content is being seen, and the effectiveness of the posts. Using this information, the company could then alter or improve their goals to something more specific or more realistic. If the posts are not performing well, the posts may need to be made at 11am instead of random times throughout the day.

Legal and ethical issues should always be of concern to any company when defining the objectives of a marketing campaign. One example would be for the company to clarify to consumers that their feedback, purchase history, etc. will be used solely for the company’s marketing research and not be sold to other parties or used in a harmful way. Another thing that needs to be considered is how the product or service is being marketed. The message of the campaign needs to sensitive in nature. What I mean by that is the product need not be advertised as something it is not. It is unethical and risky to lie to consumers about a product or service. Don’t promise your customers that this wrinkle cream will make your skin look fifty years younger. Be more truthful and advertise that the cream will reduce the appearance of wrinkles and help you look younger. Also, avoid making empty promises about your product. Don’t tell your customer that using this mascara will guarantee that you will find a boyfriend. Advertise the mascara as a cosmetic that will make your eyes more prominent and pretty.

Setting objectives before making posts on social media will help you not waste money and time on posts that won’t reach your intended audience and will help keep your message consistent with the company’s mission. Set the goals first based on the company’s mission, determine how you can make them SMART goals, establish tactics that you can practice to meet the goals, then start posting. It will be more effective in the long run to follow the steps than it would be to start posting without a guide to follow.

 

Lang, Vanessa. (n.d.). Your Ultimate Guide to Marketing Objectives (Define, Measure & Examples). UHURU. Retrieved from https://uhurunetwork.com/marketing-objectives/

Tools to Find Your Target Market

What good is your product or service if no one knows about it? Think about all the hard hours you put into developing and brainstorming for your product. You do want that product to sell, right? Determining your target market is extremely crucial and can be a daunting task if you are not sure how to do it. There are a variety of ways and tools that can help you determine who may want to buy your product.

One tool that can be very helpful in figuring out who would buy your product or pay for your service is creating a persona. Up Close and Persona is a tool that allows you to create a sample profile of your perfect customer. You could also create a persona on your own. The sample persona describes everything about who your perfect customer is, what kind of activities they participate in, where they work, how many children they have, the type of personality they have, etc. The profile of this fictitious customer will allow you to determine if they would actually buy your product and why they would buy your product. The purpose of creating a persona is to understand your customers and how they think. Below is a persona template. The template asks you to put in a photo of your perfect customer, their basic demographics, and psychographics.

Image result for persona template

(Weller, 2018)

Another helpful tool that can be used in determining your target audience and specific segments is Google Trends. This tool offered by Google allows you to see what words are trending and who is searching these words. For example, you could search “smartphone” and it would show you on a map where the most searches are coming from. It would also show you words related to smartphones that other people are searching. You can also search more than one keyword at a time to compare the numbers on a graph if you are more into the visuals. Google Trends would allow you to see what categories your audience is interested in. If used in reverse, you can determine where your target audience lives just by the number of searches in any given area. The tool is not limited to the United States. It will show you results from all over the world. If you are limiting your product to your surrounding area or country, there may be other markets that you are not tapped into yet. You may be advertising your product mainly in Los Angeles because of the high population, but two cities over with a slightly smaller population may be looking at products similar to your’s more closely.

google trend example.PNG

(Google Trends, 2020)

In the photo above, I searched the words smartphone, Android, and Apple. The graph shows that a considerably larger number of people search for “Apple” than they do “smartphone”. Because smartphones are widely used today, the smartphone companies are searched heavily all through the country.

There are certainly a lot more ways and tools that can be used to determine your target audience. There is no right or wrong tool to use. You just have to choose one and start there!

 

 

Resources:

Google Trends. (2020). Trend results: Smartphone, Apple, Android. Google Trends. Retrieved from https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=smartphones,android,apple

Weller, Joe. (2018). Easy Steps to Create a Buyer Persona Using Free Customer Profile. Smartsheet. Retrieved from https://www.smartsheet.com/customer-profile-persona-templates

 

Major points in ‘How to Waltz the Social’

The article “Two Hearts in Three-Quarter Time: How to Waltz the Social Media/Viral Marketing Dance” was written to describe the major points in mastering social media. The authors claim there are a total of six steps to waltz the social. They also include a discussion on the three conditions that need to be met to start a viral epidemic (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011). The article explores the different types of social media marketing campaigns and things that managers need to pay attention when launching a campaign. The steps to waltzing the social are using social media, using word-of-mouth, choosing the right environment and conditions to launch the campaign, choosing the right kind of campaign, ensuring the message gets spread, and the limits on word-of-mouth (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011). In order to master the social, you have to actually use the social. This starts with choosing a few platforms and being regularly present. It is important to choose the right type of campaign to launch because some ideas may not be relevant to all segments of the target audience. Also, you cannot rely heavily on word-of-mouth because the average person only knows so many people. While negativity and extreme positivity spreads quickly, the experience with your company may just be average not worth talking about. When starting a campaign with hopes of it going viral, the content needs to meet three conditions: the content must be relative to the receiver, the message must be given to the right messenger, and the message needs to be given at the right time (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011).

The article describes four different types of campaigns that a company may launch or fall victim to. One campaign is a nightmare. These ‘campaigns’ are simply caused by an unfortunate event and now the whole internet is talking about how the new Galaxy phone is exploding in your pocket. Another campaign happens in quite the opposite scenario. A campaign could be launched by another company for a whole different product, but may be paired well with your company’s product. The example used by the article is how well Mentos and Diet Coke pairs. When the candy is added to a bottle of Diet Coke, the chemical reaction is spectacular. Neither of the companies saw this viral content happening. It was plain good luck for the both of them. The third type of campaign involves homemade issues. Issues arise when a company is not honest, transparent, or intentionally deceptive. The truth is bound to be discovered by someone and it looks worse when the company is found to be hiding something from the public. The fourth campaign involves triumphs. These campaigns were launched based on a strategic plan and did fairly well in the social media world. The company earned the good metrics and increased brand mentions on social media.

 

Resource:

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2011). Two hearts in three-quarter time: How to waltz the social media/viral marketing dance. Business Horizons, 54(3), 253–263. doi: 10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.006

Social Media Usage in My Life

Social media is a large part of most peoples’ lives. It is the blue app on your home screen of your smart phone. It is what you go to when you’re bored for entertainment. It is what has consumed our youth’s attention. I use quite a few forms of social media in my life and each are used for different reasons. First, I use Facebook to keep up with my friends and family. Most of my family is about five hundred miles from me, so I like that I can watch their posts and see what they’re up to. I also use Facebook messenger to communicate to almost everyone I know. I like Messenger because it shows that the message was sent and delivered. It shows that my family member or friend got my message. I use Instagram, as well. I have a personal account that I don’t post on very often and I have an account for my artwork. Depending on my mood, I’ll switch from one account to the next to see different posts. My art account is following tags and other accounts purely related to art and the different methods and techniques. My personal account is following makeup posts and tags related to happiness, health, and marketing. I also use Yahoo Mail to keep up with my emails. I get emails from a lot of mobile apps and websites alerting me when things have changed or when something is on sale.

While I use a lot of different social media platforms, I do not like them 100%. I hate that Messenger shows when you’re active – I know this feature can be disabled – because it can cause issues. “I thought you said you were going to bed.” “I thought you said you were getting off Facebook.” That green little dot is not always accurate but people tend to believe it. Instagram is a great platform for promoting a product or service and nothing else (in my opinion). Sure, you can send messages and leave comments, but what is really the point in only sharing a photo? Instagram is owned by Facebook and Facebook has all the features of Instagram plus some. I like the idea of social media, but it has consumed us so much that some people don’t have much of a life outside of it. You can have 2,000 friends on Facebook, but only 10 of those are real, genuine friends.

Consumer Engagement with Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is one of the largest and widely known brands in the market. They are an international beverage company and compete directly with PepsiCo. Currently, the company is actively pursuing an ethical reputation by giving scholarships, replacing clean water, and improving health aid for HIV and Aids (UK Essays, 2016). However, the company has not always been out of hot water.

In 1999, nearly two thousand employees of Coca-Cola sued the company due to racial discrimination (UK Essays, 2016). The African-American community within the company felt they were being paid far less than the Caucasians – about $26,000 less. While the company denied the truth behind the allegations, Coca-Cola paid $193 million to settle the lawsuit and formed a diversity council to improve their reputation and prevent further issues from arising (UK Essays, 2016). While Coca-Cola lost some sales after the lawsuit, the company claims to not have lost any revenue (Schafer, 2000). The victims who filed the lawsuit said that the company failed to monitor their managers and supervisors, which led to one woman being verbally insulted, and others facing lower salaries, promotions, and production evaluations. Some of the accusants still do not purchase or consumer the company’s products (UK Essays, 2016). Even though Coca-Cola denied the allegations, it sent a strong message to the company. They spent about $36 million to establish a committee to monitor their employment practices (Schafer, 2000). Making the changes to their policies and committees showed the world and African-American community that they will not tolerate unlawful activities, especially involving racial discrimination.

The law clearly states any form of racism during employment is not acceptable and includes less pay, less promotions, hiring, firing, and harassment in the workplace (Thompson, 2019).  Coca-Cola should have had an anti-discriminatory policy in place to ensure employees were not subject to the hate crime. Specifically, the company could have posted their policy publicly so that stakeholders and potential employees could see where the company stood in terms of discrimination (Thompson, 2019). Having the policy posted publicly would show the world they are a transparent company and that they have nothing to hide. The company could also have had the diversity committee already in place. The diversity committee could have prevented the lawsuit if the victims could have come forward anonymously to report their experiences. The committee could have then handled the issue seriously and investigated the claim. Also, Coca-Cola should have made it clear to their employees that discrimination is never acceptable by requiring new-hire meetings that talk about these policies and the consequences of termination (Bartiromo, 2013). Setting the tone for new employees is critical if the company wants them to know what is acceptable and what is expected of each employee.

In conclusion, Coca-Cola is now a great company that practices methods that are socially and environmentally friendly. Companies of all shapes and sizes can be accused of unlawful discrimination, but could easily investigate and handle the allegations if they truly are taking every measure to ensure their employees are not subject to hate crimes by coworkers, managers, or owners. The lawsuit filed by the African-Americans who claimed they were not being treated right certainly got the company’s attention considering Coca-Cola made adjustments to their policies and established a diversity committee to oversee and manage employment practices.

Resources:

Bartiromo. (2013). Preventing Race and Color Discrimination in the Workplace. HR 360. Retrieved from https://blog.hr360.com/bid/141592/Preventing-Race-and-Color-Discrimination-in-the-Workplace

Essays, UK. (November 2018). The Coca-Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Crises. Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/the-coca-cola-company-struggles-with-ethical-crises-business-essay.php?vref=1

Schafer. (2000). Coke to Pay $193 Million In Bias Suit. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/11/17/coke-to-pay-193-million-in-bias-suit/6a43c0c7-dcde-4d8c-a95f-3fe57c508c85/

Thompson. (2019). How to Prevent Racism in the Workplace. Chron. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/prevent-racism-workplace-10258.html

 

Importance of Brand Positioning

Imagine you’re driving down the interstate and you look over to find cows painting “Eat mor chikin” on a billboard. Did your mouth just water? Did your stomach just growl?Mine always does when I think of Chick-fil-A! Also, did you know that the color red stimulates your feelings of hunger (Artitudes Design, 2017)? Yep! The color that is used widely by many restaurants, gas stations, and shopping centers is incorporated in their logo to capture your attention! How sneaky!

Chick-fil-A is my favorite fast food restaurant because of their customer service and quality food. Their great food is also a bonus! They have successfully established a positive brand position within the restaurant industry by standing out in the crowd. The corporate office’s purpose is “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with Chick-fil-A” (Chick-fil-A, 2019).  They are a Christian-based company and use their faith when making any and all business decisions (Stevens, 2014). Because the company strives for over-the-top customer satisfaction and provides higher quality food than just burgers and fries, Chick-fil-A’s brand has a positive image with many, many Americans. Specifically, they have become more successful than KFC (Stevens, 2014)! The company’s goal is to cater to customers while providing excellent dining experiences and being friendlier and healthier than their competitors. Chick-fil-A believes that a positive dining experience leads to a higher number of customer returns. I know when I see the cows painting on a billboard my mouth starts watering for their nuggets and variety of dipping sauces!

The brand seems to do everything the right way with their customers’ needs always in mind. One example of what they have done right when branding their company is adhering to their religious roots when making important decisions. They strive to do good by working for God. They observe Sundays as a day of rest for their employees and they donate to over 700 charities (Stevens, 2014). However, I do think the restaurant needs to build on their socially-responsible reputation. They should limit the amount of plastic used by switching to paper straws and condiment pumps. Making a few changes in how they impact the environment could help the company gain another target audience – the environmentalists and those who follow the “eco trend” established on social media. Overall, the company’s strategies involve excellent customer service, higher quality food, friendliness, and social responsibility.

Resources:

Artitudes Design admin. (2017). Red in Marketing – Color Psychology.  Artitudes Design. Retrieved from http://www.artitudesdesign.com/red-color-psychology/

Chick-fil-A. (2019). Who We Are. Chick-fil-A. Retrieved from https://www.chick-fil-a.com/About/Who-We-Are

Stevens, JL. (2014). Successful Brand Positioning: Chick-fil-A. WordPress. Retrieved from https://crisismanagementsolutions.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/successful-brand-positioning-chick-fil-a/

 

Emerging Social Media for Businesses: Pinterest

Most businesses use more than one social media platform to advertise their products and services, including Instagram and Facebook. These platforms are effective for most companies, but Pinterest is often overlooked. Pinterest is a social media platform that provides pins of different ideas, recipes, and products to the user. The user creates boards of categorized pins of their choosing so that they can come back later and easily find topics of interest. What separates Pinterest from other platforms is its recent and projected growth. Over the last year, the network gained over 50 million new users compared to Twitter’s smaller growth of 9 million users (Hutchinson, 2018). This is great news because it shows the platform is expanding rapidly and could potentially grow larger and more effective than Twitter. Using Pinterest would put your product and services in front of a more refined audience who happen to be very eager to make a purchase. In fact, 55% of users on Pinterest use the network to make a purchase (Hutchinson, 2018). Only 9% of Twitter’s users use the network for the same purpose. The platform is smaller, but more effective.

Pinterest offers companies the advantage of linking a pin directly to the original source. With Facebook and Instagram, it has become difficult to locate the original poster because of sharing and screen capture activity. Pinterest ensures each photo, idea, and recipe is connected to the publisher (Strong Coffee Editors, 2019). This unique feature gives companies an advantage because customers are directed to the website. Another feature the platform offers is allowing users to see topics that are trending at any given moment. Knowing the most popular topic gives a company an idea of what to post on their social media accounts (Strong Coffee Editors, 2019). Pinterest also allows users to use photos and their mobile camera to search. The platform teamed up with Bixby to provide smartphone users the ability to scan a bar code or take a photo of an unknown object and give them a suggestion as to what the item may be. All results are pulled from Pinterest. Over 600 million visual searches are conducted each month (Hutchinson, 2018).

In terms of demographics, women make up the majority of monthly active users (Kang, 2019). However, millennials use the platform as much as Instagram (Aslam, 2019). The average age of users are about 40, but the average age of active pinners on the platform are below 40 years of age. This social media network has users that are from a variety of generations, which means the users are from different times and backgrounds (Strong Coffee Marketing, 2019). Pinterest users are converted from browsers into buyers more than Twitter users are converted. Also comparing Twitter, nearly 50% of purchases are made on Pinterest because of a pin while 40% of purchases are made from an influencer or celebrity’s tweet on Twitter.

Overall, Pinterest proves to be a very promising tool for companies to use in their marketing strategy because of its growth and features. Women are the largest portion of the users, but women also make more purchases than men in certain categories. Particularly, women tend to make more purchases in the clothing and pet categories while men purchase more food, vehicles, and alcohol (Livingston, 2018). Depending on the type of products being marketed by a company, women do make more conscious purchases than men and would rather spend time to compare products and prices (Livingston, 2018). Any company would benefit from adding Pinterest to their marketing strategy, especially if their target audience is mainly women or Millennials. Some of the advantages include increasing brand awareness in women, monitoring and adjusting effectiveness of pins and advertisements, and keeping up with trends to gain more attention from the audience. Because the users on Pinterest are so eager to make purchases, a company would make more sales on this platform rather than a platform that doesn’t accurately reflect the targeted audience.

Resources:  

Aslam, Salman. (2019). “Pinterest by the Numbers: Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts.” Web. Omnicore. Retrieved from https://www.omnicoreagency.com/pinterest-statistics/  

Hutchinson, Andrew. (2018). “Pinterest is Growing Faster than Twitter and Snapchat, and Offers Significant Opportunities.” Web. Social Media Today. Retrieved from https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/pinterest-is-growing-faster-than-twitter-and-snapchat-and-offers-significa/524417/ 

Kang, Duckju. (2019). “Pinterest vs Twitter vs Snapchat: What You Need to Know Before Investing in IPO.” Web. Value Champion. Retrieved from https://www.valuechampion.sg/pinterest-vs-twitter-vs-snapchat-what-you-need-know-investing-ipo 

Livingston, Amy. (2018). “Men, Women & Money – How the Sexes Differ With Their Finances.” Web. Money Crashers. Retrieved from  https://www.moneycrashers.com/men-women-money-sexes-differ-finances/  

Strong Coffee Editors. (2019). “6 Reasons You Should Be Using Pinterest for Business.” Web. Strong Coffee Marketing. Retrieved from https://strongcoffeemarketing.com/quick-tips/6-reasons-you-should-be-using-pinterest-for-business/ 

 

Role of Social Media

I have found myself scrolling through Pinterest quite often lately when I’m needing artistic inspiration or keto recipe ideas. I used Pinterest for a while when I was in my early teens but strayed away once Instagram grew and then Snapchat was introduced. I have found a new joy in this never-ending feed of ideas and photos. Since my marketing courses I’ve learned how to spot advertisements and its quite interesting how sneaky and smart advertisements have become! Earlier today I noticed strategically-placed ads for items that were tailored to fit my interests and were related to the content I had searched on Pinterest! I ad looked nearly identical to the average pin and I almost clicked on it! I then realized it was an advertisement for a product, not for whatever the item was I had searched. It is truly amazing how social media is able to gather personal content using cookies and create personalized advertisements to gain a new or returning customer.

Another sneaky advertisement I have recently found on this platform is paid pins. To be personal, I was searching for printable mental health PDF worksheets and found a few that seemed relatable and happened to be free. However, some of the really good worksheets that seemed to fit my personality and life perfectly seemed free from the posting but, once you clicked the ad you could then see where the sponsor of the pin was charging $8.00 for a printable PDF of their workbook. I was very tempted to make the purchase, but didn’t considering the numerous free versions available. The free versions were posted by bloggers and individuals who would only give out the PDF to you once you submitted your email address to their blog. I knew what they were doing when they asked for my email but I really wanted that worksheet! I put in my email, confirmed my email, and downloaded the worksheets. I’ll stay subscribed for a while to see what else they have to offer, but I’ll probably end up unsubscribing just because of the number of redundant emails I get on the daily. From the fifteen minutes I spent searching for those worksheets, I believe I signed up to three different blogs! What reeled me in were pins that showed a sample of the PDF. I wanted to know a little about the writing prompts and questions before subscribing and downloading just to have to delete and unsubscribe immediately. From my perspective, paid pins are extremely effective.

I can see how it would be beneficial to me as an artist to use Pinterest to advertise my art. I know I can’t be the only artist who turns to the internet and social media when needing some inspiration!

Marketing Implications

Instagram is probably my favorite social media platform right now because of it’s simplicity. I can launch the app and begin scrolling right away on either my art account or my personal account depending on the mood I’m in. What I mean by that is when I’m feeling crafty or creative and need some inspiration, I scroll through the hundreds and hundreds of posts using my art account on Instagram. I have specifically followed pages that are similar to my own art or inspire me significantly to try new techniques. However, when I’m in the mood for funny material, such as memes, or photos from friends or people traveling, I scroll through my personal account. Lately, I’ve found myself on my art account quite often probably because I’ve been creating, painting, and drawing a lot. One of my guilty pleasures on social media is advertisements because of the creativity and uniqueness of each post.

Instagram is heavily used for promoting products and services by engaging with consumers and grasping their attention using only photos. Accounts large and small host giveaways to promote commenting, re-posting, and tagging other users to gain more attention (Tooby, n.d.). I find myself sucked into these marketing strategies because I want to win! I know they are really trying to score my like, subscription to their page, or my email address, but I don’t care! I tag as many of my friends as they request me to and cross my fingers. I never win but, I keep trying! Most of the giveaways I come across on my art page are beautiful works of art that cost a fortune and would look beautiful in any home.

Another marketing strategy utilized on Instagram are carousel advertisements, which I don’t think are used enough. I am a huge fan of carousel ads because they always catch my attention and I scroll through every one of the photos – no matter what. The string of photos are always great quality and usually quite colorful and captivating. For example, I make purchases through Walmart.com occasionally so I see carousel advertisements posted by Walmart. I think my last few online purchases were small furniture pieces and my browsing history is full of furniture and home decor. I do click on these advertisements because the ad made me realize I need to redecorate my entire home and need to check on the prices of things. Within the past few months, however, I’ve started noticing carousel advertisements from Wayfair. I don’t shop with Wayfair. I don’t even have an account! But, you know, I still scroll through every photo in that ad because the photos are of desks, chairs, couches, tables, and light fixtures. They know the way to my heart! Wayfair has yet to fully suck me in, though, because I cannot click their advertisement without the link redirecting me to download their mobile app. I don’t want to download the app because my browsing is just a spur of the moment and I’m not a fan of their prices compared to Walmart.com.

Hashtags are probably the most popular and easiest form of free advertising on Instagram today. The keywords used are what brings in the viewers to your posts (Cronin, 2019). I use them on every post on my personal and art account to gain attention and I search hashtags based on what I’m in the mood to see. Hashtags are used to attract specific genres and audiences to attract users. When posting a photo of my latest acrylic painting, I use hashtags such as #acryliconcanvas, #artiststofollow, #paintingoftheday, and any materials I used in the creation of the painting. These hashtags are key words that users who are familiar with art search for and use in their own art posts. I also use more generic hashtags such as #homedecor, #officedecor, and #diyart to draw in an average user who may be looking for a piece to hang above their desk at work and don’t know art lingo.

There are plenty other ways company advertise their products but these strategies capture my attention the most and almost always win a click or “like” from me. What are some forms of social media advertising that successfully grabs your attention?

 

Resources:

Cronin, Nicola. (April 2019). How To Create A Winning Instagram Marketing Strategy. HopperHQ. Retrieved from https://www.hopperhq.com/blog/instagram-marketing-strategy/

Tooby, Alex. (n.d.). How to Host a Successful Instagram Giveaway. Alex Tooby. Retrieved from https://alextooby.com/instagram-giveaway/

 

Digital Advertising in Five Years

The advertising industry has come a long way from radio and newspaper ads and companies can reach more consumers at a faster rate than ever before thanks to the updates in technology. Video and virtual reality advertisements will have a significant impact on the digital advertising industry in the future because of how successful video publishing platforms are today. Videos are posted on platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Periscope and then are shared on social media to spread awareness and increase views. Advertising in virtual reality is not as popular as on video platforms because it is still fairly new. Using virtual reality to advertise a product or service will be game-changing because companies have the ability to make consumers see and feel the environment while using the product. Commercials and simple videos today only make you see the product. The VR experience would provide you with gorgeous, immersive 360 degree advertisements at real life scale (VirtualSky, 2017). Companies will no longer have to rely on a story to persuade a purchase, but rather an experience. Being able to tinker with a newly launched iPhone before making that large purchase, being able to walk around that new Tesla model, or being able to explore the beaches of Puerto Rico without ever leaving your home will sell a product quicker than any sales pitch (Forbes Agency Council, 2018). To reach those who do not participate in VR, the same videos used could be slightly manipulated and posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

One of the most impacting marketing strategies is personalized advertising. Developing ads that relate a consumer help them feel they are being spoken to directly, which increases consumer purchases. Today, companies use cookies and location services to provide the customer better advertisements, but the future is bright for personalized advertising. Within the next five or so years, our phones will without a doubt have the ability to listen to us when we speak and be programmed to listen for changes in our tone and pitch and match them to emotions we may be feeling (Abramovich, 2018). The emotions will help their program find products and services that we will be interested in and in the MOOD to see. Personalized ads could also go a step further and scan our face for emotions when we use iris recognition to unlock our phones (Abramovich, 2018). Imagine losing a close relative and you’re experiencing grief, heartache, pain, and anger. With the combination of your phone monitoring your tone of voice, your emotion, your conversations, and your location, you could see ads for local grievance counselors or even encouragements to join a church – probably a church within a few miles of you that your mutual friends on Facebook attend!

Virtual assistant software will only continue to grow and become smarter with the advancing technology. Software such as Siri, Bixby, and Cortana could be helpful to consumers and companies when reaching goals or just living life (Abramovich, n.d.). Virtual assistants could provide company owners with real time statistics and metrics by simply asking how many sales occurred yesterday compared to the day before (Doddala, 2018). The software might even be able to monitor the sales and alert the owner if a risky threshold is reached and ask the owner what he’d like to do about it. VAs would reduce the risk of human error and mixing human emotion with business and reduce the cost of employee salary costs. For customers, ordering items online already takes place through VAs and would only become more convenient within five years.

I only discussed three of the many methods and technologies related to digital advertising that I feel will have a major impact on marketing within the next few years. What’s next? How much more convenient could ordering online possibly get? How much more could technology advance?

What marketing strategy, technology, or trend do you think will have a major impact on the digital advertising industry within the next few years?

 

Resources:

Abramovich, G. (2018, September 19). Experts Weigh In On The Future Of Advertising. Retrieved from CMO: https://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2018/6/14/welcome-to-the-future-of-advertising-cannes18.html#gs.imnwsg

Abramovich, G. (n.d.). 15 Mind-Blowing Stats About the Future of Advertising. Retrieved from Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/insights/15-mind-blowing-stats-about-the-future-of-advertising.html

Doddala, H. (2018, April 26). The Virtual Assistant is the Future of Business. Retrieved from DZone: https://dzone.com/articles/the-virtual-assistant-is-the-future-of-business

Forbes Agency Council. (2018, May 12). 12 Predictions For How VR Will Change The Future Of Advertising. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/12/12-predictions-for-how-vr-will-change-the-future-of-advertising/#69dea5a77847

VirtualSKY. (2017). Retrieved from VirtualSKY: https://virtualsky.com/