The Future of Marketing

The world is constantly evolving. It becomes imperative for businesses to deal with these changes. That is achieved by modifying their functions, one of them being marketing.

Marketing has advanced over the years from purely relating to the buying and selling of goods in the market way back in the 16th century to several interrelated activities across multiple channels.

Keeping this background in mind, let us deep dive into the trends in marketing and possible changes that might take place in future.

SOCIAL MEDIA, A MARKETER’S DREAM:

For me, the single biggest game changer for marketing is social media. You can now reach several thousands of people either through a well-crafted post, or by running an advert. On a personal level, this has been life changing. I am a massive football fan and support Arsenal FC. On a warm summer’s day back in 2017, I decided to start a Twitter account @ltarsenal and tweet from my heart about the team that I love. Today, that page has grown close to a community of 240k followers and is followed by a lot of prominent people from the football industry.

My main learnings from posting content on social media is to always say what you truly believe in, never make content solely to please your audience. This is the best long-term approach. I never have a posting schedule, everything is intuitive. When I felt like posting something, I just did it. The key in social media is to interact with people, get to know them on a deeper level and as time goes, you will build connections.

This trend of online community building is of vital importance as they are usually your target audience. In my case, I ran a website which had adverts in it. Social media was a powerful vehicle to bring in much needed traffic. Additionally, I also acted as an influencer and got advertisement opportunities. My biggest takeaway from all of this is a bit controversial: Marketing cannot be taught, you can go through the fundamentals, but it’s all about doing and continually improving.

ONLINE INFLUENCERS – A COST EFFECTIVE APPROACH:

Influencer marketing is another increasingly common place occurrence. Last summer, I was working on a project for a website that was based in Ireland. They wanted to market this cool game and gave me full control of managing a decent budget. My biggest dilemma was: should I run social adverts to promote it, or contact some of the biggest players in that niche? I chose the latter, and the rewards were incredible. We spent close to 2k EUR and had 1.2k players for the game. Essentially, we spent less than EUR 2 per player which would’ve been impossible with Twitter or Instagram ads. However, this whole process is not simple.

When it comes to social adverts, you decide certain parameters and just run it. But when you’re going through influencers, you need to identify them, agree on a rate within a budget, come with a suitable post caption and track progress. That is why there are influencer marketing managers. If you’re someone that is a good negotiator and builds relations with people well, seriously consider exploring this domain!

THE RISE OF NFT’S:

NFT’s (Non-Fungible Tokens) are going to be huge for every marketer in the coming years. There is a misconception amongst people that these tokens are just art that people buy and sell. From a marketer’s standpoint, I’m not too bothered about the art element. What I’m really intrigued by are the smart contract possibilities of NFT’s.

If I’m the owner of a coffee shop, I give my customers an NFT for purchases over a certain amount. That NFT not only contains within it an intrinsic value, but also a contractual clause entitling the customer for a free coffee in his next visit. This is properly secured by the blockchain. Some of the functionalities that can be leveraged by a marketer because of this really excites me. You don’t have to be a be a crypto expert, but a base level appreciation of this will go a long way in the coming years.

THE INCREASING IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL IMPACT:

Another important trend to appreciate are the global initiatives being adopted to create a sustainable future. I learned something very interesting in my management course which speaks about ‘social impact marketing’. Essentially, a marketer must consider the needs of every stakeholder while performing his function.

Highlighting a cause such as ‘Our biscuit wrapper is made from recycled waste’ is a marketing technique by itself. In my view, with environmental problems on the rise and calls for ecologically friendly ways of running a business getting louder and louder, a marketer needs to adapt himself to fulfil this requirement. Create social impact, but also use it as a powerful marketing tool to incentivize customers into making purchases. Newer approaches to make this possible will be explored. For me, the customer is king. Number one rule in marketing: Customers are always right. If a marketing campaign doesn’t go according to plan, it is your fault because you did not understand their interests.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:

Lastly, many are curious about Artificial intelligence and its possible impacts on the role of a marketer. I think in future, there will be a separate marketing team consisting of personnel that understand the AI space in great depth. Remember, AI can help us arrive at the best solution. But to execute it, you need a human.

The AI machine can tell me statistically which influencers are best value for money – but reaching out to them, negotiating, and having that personal touch is something a machine will never be capable of doing. So, while I appreciate that is an important trend, marketers will never be replaced. This is going to be an evergreen function for as long as the world exists.

Thank you for your patient reading!

By Sashank Sharathkumar