3 Emerging Trends that may Change Digital Marketing Forever

The art of digital marketing is not the same as it was yesterday, and it won’t be the same tomorrow. The behavior of consumers has been seeing a lot of fluctuations in their pattern making digital marketers think through their proven success strategies and tweak them to bring in more success. In short, the marketing world has a need to respond to the whims of the consumers to keep afloat in the more-competitive-than-ever scenario. Meanwhile, what is expected in the world of marketing in the near future could bring us- as marketers -more excitement than never before.

Here are a few trends that can change the way you look at marketing by bringing in an ocean of changes.

Sales funnel is no more linear:

Our conventional wisdom about marketing says that a buyer passes through different stages, roughly four, before arriving at a conclusion to buy a product or a service. The route is not the same anymore. More bad news is it is no more linear.

Gartner’s report on top emerging trends in digital marketing says that the customers move in their own pace along the buying path and make decisions, whenever and wherever they want to. Thus, the sales path is not holistically a funnel but is rather blown up into bits, making it tougher for the marketers to guess a buyer’s journey.

The multifold raise in platforms and devices has given the customer the freedom to stroll across the World Wide Web and access information, making it tougher to demarcate the buying behavior within a predefined pattern.

The good news is that there will be a search for new patterns and definitions in the near future.

A lot depended on Google, Once!

This is not a statement undermining the power of the search behemoth (which still it is), but the fact is that a lot has changed as Google has become one among the platforms that could bring in customers to your business.

History was different. Google was the major marketplace where customers search for their needs and services. Nowadays, there are more sources of information and referrals that are driving the attention of the consumers away from Google.

Google is an indirect way of reaching potential customers, whereas there are a lot of direct means and ways to target customers.

Real-time or Responsive Marketing

Of course, both are not the same, but to some extent yes.

As the terms may sound very modern but the concept is very old that dates back to the 90s. At least in the digital era, they have taken a new shape. This can act as a solution to the problem that we discussed first, the sales funnel breakup. Real time marketing makes use of the customer instincts at the spur of the moment and makes them do a purchase.

These marketing efforts are based on a trending event or a concept and not on conventional marketing practices that chart out a plan well in advance and then execute it.

Real-time marketing will help brands in creating a viral effect in which customers build links to other customers through social media. It is the instantaneous gratification combined with the desire to keep up with the latest trends that drive this effort of real-time marketing.

Thus, what is very crucial for real-time marketing is its temporal significance i.e. putting at the right time the right message. In some sense, real-time marketing may seem to pay more attention to the timing rather than the context and hence you may call it responsive marketing. Now, the context of the message becomes equally crucial as the timing of its delivery.

Thus what is delivered and when is very much pivotal in grabbing the attention of customers.

The momentum of marketing in this method varies drastically when compared to the conventional marketing practices.

These emerging trends can make the marketing landscape look entirely different from what it is today. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section.