Written for a client.
It takes ambition to be a digital marketer today. The pace of change and evolution of technology is relentless. There’s a lot to keep up with, but we can create exceptional results with these new tools. Here are three trends to get familiar with, so you can stay ahead of the curve – for now.
Trend 1: Voice Recognition
Everybody is familiar with SEO and how important it is to your marketing efforts, but now, it’s evolving. As technology has changed, so did the way that we find information. It used to be that we’d use our keyboard and enter keywords when searching for information. Now, with the Internet of Things (IoT), were searching more often with our voices.
Voice search is the next generation of SEO, and many of the world’s biggest brands and organizations are increasing their investments to stay at the forefront. That means, as B2B marketers, we need to increase our knowledge base too.
Walmart, the largest retailer globally, has recently invested in voice-activated shopping, meaning more are sure to follow. [1]The retail giant has created voice ordering capabilities powered by Google Assistant for their grocery customers. Shoppers can simply say, “Ok, Google, ask Walmart to add coffee to my cart,” and the Google Assistant will recommend brands and add it to your cart for later purchase.
Many consumers are already familiar with Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. Now, it’s just a matter of time until voice search is the preferred search method.
- As of 2020, 62% of Americans said they have used voice assistance technology[2]
- 45% of U.S. Millennials use voice assistance when shopping online[3]
- 52% of voice-assistant users say they use it several times a day or nearly every day[4]
So what does this mean for your marketing? As users become comfortable with voice search, they’ll expect your business to use it too. You’ll need to account for how people use voice search when building your SEO strategies.
- Reconsider your longtail keywords to better match speech patterns
- Voice searchers often ask how, what, when, why, where, so include them in your keywords[5]
- Use short, rich snippets in content because there easier for voice devices to read
Trend 2: AI and Automation
Simply put, Artificial Intelligence is machine intelligence that enables decision-making, improves outcomes, or enhances efficiency.[6] AI can be a robot, software/algorithm, or a smart device that carries out specific functions, like an artificial body part.
There are three levels of AI:
- Narrow AI
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) does a specific task but can modify when the behavior changes and is widely available to marketers today. Think of email auto-responders or chatbots.
- General AI
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Performs any task humans can, is capable of cognitive functions, and understand its environment like a human would.
- Super AI
Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) AI becomes much more intelligent than the best human brains. This is “The Terminator” or “CP30” robot of the future.
There are three common ways B2B marketers can use ANI today.
- Content marketing
Some organizations like The Washington Post[7] use AI-based content creation. By inputting the parameters so the AI can craft relatively accurate stories that need only minor editing.
- Demo and training materials
In 2020 at the Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung introduced the NEON “artificial human.”[8] Neon is an advanced video chatbot created for business. It can learn preferences and respond in a lifelike way. Samsung believes they can perform well enough to act as spokespeople. We can certainly see them performing repetitive tasks such as giving demonstrations, presentations and training materials.
- Demand Generation & Email marketing
The easiest way for B2B Marketers to immediately employ AI is through demand gen and email marketing. In many ways, you probably already do.
Many Martech platforms have built-in intelligence features, and you may not be using them to their potential. For example, Salesforce Einstein [9]is a layer of intelligence within the Salesforce Platform that can predict outcomes and build, train, and deploy custom bots — trained on your CRM data — to augment business processes.
Likewise, Hubspot AI [10]uses various bots to help marketing and sales teams keep their CRM data clean. Every B2B marketer knows what a challenge and chore that can be, so it’s an easy job to have AI take it over.
These are just two examples, but many more Martech tools have built-in AI features that you just need to employ. [11]At the base level, AI is great for data clean-up, segmentation and personalization or customization tasks.
Trend 3: Customer Experience and Smaller Form Factor
Last but not least, we come to CX and the smaller form factor. At the evolution of Customer Experience, users would seek information on a desktop computer, then a laptop, cell phone, and now a watch or voice devices.
My point? Screens are getting smaller and our marketing must adapt accordingly.
Customer Experience includes everything your company creates and how they engage with their users. This is the help desk, packaging, app features, website navigation, advertising – the list is endless. Each of these things must account for how your customer uses them, how they get to them and even which device they’re using.
What good is your excellent content if they can’t see it on their iWatch? How efficient is your chatbot if it doesn’t perform well with voice response?
Many SaaS-based services can help with your CX. They include data collection, storage, and dashboards to analyze what’s working across devices and platforms. Adobe Experience Manager is one example. It’s a CMS app with an open architecture that allows users to create content for web, mobile and social media channels. It then measures customer experience by tracking web analytics, paid advertising and can A/B test digital content for optimization.[12]
Buffer is another example. It’s a social media tool that offers publishing, analytics and engagement. It enables you to visually plan your content to see how it will look across devices and platforms. They even incorporate AI with “Smart alerts” using machine learning to help you monitor post sentiment and activity that needs attention.
Meanwhile, Cash App is an example of excellent CX that users love. Cash App has managed to seamlessly integrate everything to do with money into an easy-to-use small form app.
Cash App users can send and receive money, donate, or tip by scanning a QR code. They can use it as a banking manager for tax returns, paycheck and direct deposits. They can even use it to manage stocks and invest in Bitcoin. What’s more, it comes with a free, customizable debit card that provides offers and discounts with usage. They’ve taken what used to be a multi-channel cumbersome series of processes and designed them to work on a tiny screen.
Likewise, marketing managers can ensure they’re designing for CX and the smaller form factor with smart strategic planning through the design and customer journey.
In conclusion, digital marketing will continue to be a revolving door of new technology, devices and channels. Marketing managers that embrace learning and adapt quickly to change like the three trends mentioned above will fare best and reap the most success.
Regardless of how much technology changes, good marketing will always require using the right platforms, having solid plans, and an in-depth understanding of your customers.