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Digital Technology

How Technology Will Influence Digital Marketing

Across industries, technology is influencing how firms run. In the context of digital marketing, marketers work diligently to stay up with the newest technological advances so that they may be tailored to the distinct voice and demands of particular companies. The simple fact is that technological improvements have a significant influence on digital marketing.

In 2013, 47 percent of US marketers emphasize creativity as a driving force in their marketing approach. Last year, that figure was 29%. In 2022, innovation and technology will serve equal roles in defining where and how marketers communicate with their customers, according to 56% of marketers. 

From web technology and online collaboration to artificial intelligence and company data analytics, modern tech has had and continues to have a significant influence on business marketing. To begin, more gadgets are linked to the internet than ever before.

You could check your email on your computer, surf through Instagram on the mobile, and binge-watch Netflix via your smart Television all on the same day. The Internet of Things technology has led to a huge network of smart devices, which means unprecedented prospects for new lines of company and income growth.

The manner digital marketers structure their budgets is being influenced by technology whereas conventional marketing efforts entailed paying money on television commercials or newspapers, digital marketers are making use of technologies like Google Analytics. They’re also putting money into SEO. Your website’s rating may be improved with good SEO. You’ll be able to identify certain keywords and drive targeted traffic to your website.

According to BusinessTown, over half of mobile searches lead to a purchase. Emerging AI technology has the potential to increase Google conversion rates even more. Your company’s website is an important tool for generating prospects and growing.

To gain the rewards, you must first place your website on the top page of search engine results. Moreover, your website has to be mobile-friendly so that people purchasing on their cellphones may easily traverse it.

3 Tech Trends That Will Influence Your Marketing

  1. Data Analytics –

Marketers must learn to make better use of the data they acquire. Customers continually provide personal details to the businesses with which they interact, ranging from purchasing habits to preferred items to the best methods to contact them via advertising and marketing activities. Customers are seeking a return on their data, whether it is in the form of more tailored marketing or targeted coupons/deals.

Marketers must do more than just collect data. Data must be meaningful, and firms must utilize it to better marketing strategies.

Predictive data, smarter, scalable, and more flexible datasets, edge computing for quicker analysis, and hybrid computing that combines off-premises and on-premises cloud solutions will be key trends in 2022. Machine learning-driven solutions, such as augmented analytics, engineering decision analytics, and data visualization, will also find an increased use for better decision-making, company management, insights, and automation.

  1. Social Media Marketing

Social media will be critical to successful businesses’ digital marketing initiatives. Expect video, Instagram, live streaming, and podcasts to dominate the list in 2022. Facebook will be here for a long time. LinkedIn will also become more powerful, especially as influencers utilize it to amplify their voices. When it comes to influencers, 2022 is the year of specialists with fewer but more devoted followers. What counts is the niche, and those who can control an empty ocean with little to no rivalry will lead the charge.

  1. Chatbots and conversational AI

Almost 42% of consumers make purchases using conversational AI and chatbots. Despite this, the majority of small company owners polled indicated they did not use technology. Chatbots and increasingly complex cognitive AI can answer basic client queries at any time of day or night, regardless if you’re busy with other work.

AI-powered chatbots may be utilized for customer service, drastically increasing contact strategy with a regulated message. Many customers don’t notice the difference, but these chatbots have the extra privilege of being able to collect, analyze, and deliver relevant data that can be utilized to enhance the customer experience.

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Digital Technology

7 New Technology Trends for Digital Marketers

In terms of technology, 2020 was a year of revolutionary adoption. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted marketers to test technology they never would have explored before, such chatbots and video conferencing systems.

It is too soon to say how many of these technologies will continue to dominate marketing when the world reopens in 2021. We are unsure if these will prove to be enduring aspects of a new norm or transient changes to life on lockdown.

Nobody can accurately predict what the state of marketing will be in the future. However, professionals can share their insights and predictions about some of the chances that might be available in the upcoming years.

It is essential to monitor statistics, analyses, and data patterns in order to recognise them. Make sure, though, that your marketing strategy leaves plenty of flexibility for adaptation and modification.

So let’s start.

People nonetheless remain the main drivers of the economy, despite the epidemic having altered how people conduct themselves and interact with businesses. Businesses will also need to digitise their processes more rigorously in order to function in the current environment.

Location Independence: COVID-19 has changed how businesses, their clients, and their staff physically interact. The definition of location will need to undergo a digital transition in order to support this new type of organisation.

Delivering with resilience: Whether it’s a pandemic or a recession, the future is uncertain. Businesses need to be ready to change course and accommodate various disturbances.

In light of these aspects, we have selected a few recent technological developments that are most likely to have an influence on marketers in 2021 and beyond.

Biggest technology trends to watch out for.

1. Internet of Behaviors (I0B)

You must be acquainted with IoT, sometimes known as the “Internet of Things,” which is a system of networked objects that collects and exchanges data online. Similar to IoT, the Internet of Behavior (IoB) blends behavioural science, data analytics, and IoT.

IoB tries to understand why people do things like purchase a product, follow their favourite brand on social media, or wash their hands at work. 

2. Automation based on AI

Will robots become more prevalent starting in 2021? Possibly (but preferably not in the vein of science fiction end-of-the-world movies!)

We have already witnessed significant advancements in AI over the past few years, as well as a sharp increase in the number of businesses embracing automation driven by AI to support their marketing initiatives. 

One of the key technologies powering voice search and smart assistants is AI. Additionally, the use of chatbots is growing and appearing on more websites.

AI and automation are removing some of the tedious tasks associated with marketing so that businesses can concentrate on plans that improve the client experience.

Big data can help marketers better understand their customers with the help of predictive analytics, which will ultimately result in increased customer acquisition. Recently, it has made it possible to hyperpersonalize and scale marketing messages.

Keep in mind that marketing’s human component is still crucial. Therefore, the objective is to increase marketing efforts rather than to take the place of the people who are actually responsible for them.

3. Live Videos

By 2027, it is anticipated that the live video streaming business would be worth 184.3 billion. People appreciate live streaming because they can view actual footage, watch behind-the-scenes films, and interact live with industry professionals.

The technology is helpful for business since it increases consumer awareness of and interest in their brands. Live videos are already being invested in by several businesses. Many other companies fund live product demonstrations from social media influencers while some organise live Q&A sessions.

In spite of this, live content viewing time increased by 250 percent globally in 2020.

4. Localized marketing

The usage of geolocation data in marketing is expanding alongside the proliferation of IoT devices and the significant increase in demand for individualised customer service.

The idea of local marketing for businesses is not new. Every worldwide brand, no matter how big or little, recognises the importance of localising their marketing messages. 

In addition, search engines like Google have been quite effective at connecting customers with nearby companies, whether they are looking for a coffee shop or a new pair of shoes. 

At the moment, 8 out of 10 marketers use location data in their marketing and advertising initiatives, or more than 84 percent. 94% anticipate doing so in the future.

Since everyone now owns a smartphone, advertisers may send messages to potential customers as they are just a few metres from their store. 

Geolocation and IoT technology can be combined to create sophisticated and targeted marketing campaigns. For instance, a consumer could be reminded that they are low on milk as they pass the grocery shop.

5. Buying Sensibly

We refer to automated smart bidding techniques seen in Google Ads when we use the term “smart bidding.” 

Recently, automation has been a hot topic in the world of digital marketing. While running a Google Advertising campaign, marketers spend a lot of time and money optimising keywords and bids.

The idea of automatic bidding on Google Ads eliminates any conjecture and guessing and makes it easier for advertisers to achieve their objectives. To increase efficiency and enhance campaign success, Google analyses all the data and modifies the bids accordingly.

6. Data Analytics

The majority of brands view data analytics as a requirement, and marketers still have a lot to eat.

It is past time for marketers to learn how to make use of the customer data that has been gathered. Businesses are constantly loaded with personal information on their clients, including information about their purchasing patterns, the products they prefer, and the best ways to contact them.

What do consumers anticipate in return? a few targeted bargains and advertisements.

Therefore, marketers need to do more than merely gather data. Companies must use this data to improve their marketing efforts, and the data must be useful.

The day is saved by data analytics. They give marketers enough data to make it simpler to tailor customer encounters.

7. Voice Search

Technology seems to advance every year, and speech recognition is no exception. Today, voice search boasts an accuracy rating of 95%, which is on par with most people. 

It makes sense considering that each day, thousands of new voice command systems are marketed worldwide. If you aren’t focusing on voice search as digital marketers, you are losing out on a sizable portion of your audience.

Also keep in mind that while using voice search, users rarely utilise short phrases; instead, they use complete sentences. Generally, they speak as they normally do.

If you work in the food industry and people are searching for “how to bake a cake with a microwave,” you should optimise your content based on comparable answers. Your holy grail in 2021 will be long-tail and question-and-answer-based keywords.

Conclusion

Planning your 2021 marketing strategy with the aforementioned technologies in mind should begin right away. Concentrate your efforts on marketing that is customer-centered. After all, this has been the current fashion for a while and won’t go out of style very soon.

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Digital Technology

What is Marketing Technology and MarTech?

Marketing technology is a collection of software solutions that marketing executives employ to achieve mission-critical business goals and generate innovation inside their firms. Content and customer satisfaction, advertising, lead generation, marketing management, and promotional data and statistics are all areas where Martech solutions may help.

What are the benefits of using marketing technology?

Marketing technology boosts corporate efficiency and performance.

Increases in the latter can be due to two separate drivers: first, automation of time-consuming marketing duties reduces the number of man-hours required for marketing plan implementation, allowing you to accomplish more with fewer resources. Second, marketing technology may give you useful information about the ROI of company marketing initiatives. Once you’ve determined ROI, you can balance a load of various activities to maximize cost per acquisition.

Many organizations are engaging in marketing technologies due to increased competition. As leading companies realize the benefits of implementing MarTech solutions, others dread falling behind and see investing as an opportunity.

This has resulted in an increase in the acceptance and adoption of MarTech platforms, notably systems that provide automation for marketing and data analysis, among many other advantages.

There is also a growing desire among organizations to upgrade existing old systems and implement MarTech platforms that can be used by corporations, rather than the marketing department being segregated and missing out on critical information that may be used in their campaigns.

Offering a personalised approach

The capacity of enterprises to give a more tailored approach than they could previously is fundamental to the use of this data.

The more data you collect, the more knowledge you have to target your advertisements to precise, segmented audiences across all of your platforms.

The better you understand your customers and tailor your campaigns to them, the further effective they will be and the further leads you will convert.

When putting together a marketing technology platform, it’s critical to understand which technologies are basic and should be installed first. These technologies should be considered necessary by all B2C and B2B marketers:

  1. CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CSM)-

A content management system (CMS) is an application that is used to manage content, allowing multiple contributors to create, edit and publish. Content in a CMS is typically stored in a database and displayed in a presentation layer based on a set of templates like a website.

What Makes up a Content Management System?

On a more technical level, a content management system is made up of two core parts:

  • A content management application (CMA) – this is the part that allows you to actually add and manage content on your site (like you saw above).
  • A content delivery application (CDA) – this is the backend, behind-the-scenes process that takes the content you input in the CMA, stores it properly, and makes it visible to your visitors.

Benefits of a content management system

The advantages of a content management platform. The collaborative nature of a CMS is a significant advantage. Many people can log in and edit, schedule, or control published material. A CMS can be accessible from everywhere by any number of users because the interface is usually browser-based.

  1. EMAIL –

Email marketing is the use of email to advertise a company’s products and services while simultaneously rewarding client loyalty. Email marketing is a type of marketing in which you can inform clients on an email list about new products, promotions, and other services. This can be a soft sell to teach your customers about the worth of your brand or to keep them engaged in the interim. Mailchimp can assist you with designing, building, and optimizing email marketing to maximize the ROI of your marketing program.

Email is one of the finest venues for reaching a specific audience because it is not affected by algorithm updates or what is hot. Consider the following: According to a recent survey, over half of US respondents check their email over ten times every day. An email is an efficient tool for businesses to communicate with their clients.

Advantages of email marketing

Email marketing may help you create relationships with your customers while driving blog traffic, social networks, or anywhere you want them to go. You can also divide your emails and attract the audience based on demographics to ensure that you only send individuals the messages they want to see.

  1. SOCIAL MEDIA –

Social media operations may be enhanced in a variety of ways by utilizing technology. For example, if you manage many Twitter accounts, TweetDeck consolidates all of your Twitter accounts into a single, easy-to-manage dashboard.

Alternatively, if you find that looking for and resizing photographs for various social media accounts takes too much effort, Bynder derivatives automatically resize your images for each platform, making publishing images across several social media platforms simple.

Advantages of Social media 

Because it allows for sharing, social media may also help you establish your brand. On these sites, you may re-pin, share, retweet, and material. This implies that followers may share your material with their family and friends, exposing your business to a larger audience. It’s a wonderful technique to get fresh leads.

  1. Customer relationship management (CRM) – 

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a method for managing all of your firm’s relationships and interactions with present and potential customers. The goal is simple: to strengthen commercial ties. A CRM system helps organisations stay connected to their consumers while also reducing procedures and enhancing profitability.

When people speak about CRM, they usually mean a CRM system, which is a tool that aids in sales management, contact management,  productivity, and other areas.

A CRM solution allows you to focus on your organization’s partnerships with specific individuals — such as customers, service users, coworkers, or suppliers — throughout the lifecycle of the relationship, including customer acquisition, winning one‘s business, and offering assistance and additional services.

Here’s why CRM matters to your business.

A CRM system could provide you with a comprehensive perspective of your clients. Everything is in one place – a simple, customizable dashboard that displays a client’s prior history with you, the progress of their orders, any exceptional customer support issues, and more.

Marketers can utilize a CRM solution to have a better understanding of the sales or prospect funnel, making forecasting easier and more accurate. Every chance or lead will be clearly visible to you, displaying a clear route from inquiry to sales.

  1. ANALYTICS –

What you don’t measure, you can’t improve. Understanding the performance of your website as well as other digital assets is critical for marketing teams these days.

Google Analytics is the most famous and comprehensive analytics application for your website, and it’s free. Google Analytics delivers the most comprehensive statistics on website performance, able to monitor everything from the number of website visits to the average length of time spent on every page of the website. These insights are extremely helpful to marketing teams since they allow them to optimize marketing efforts using real-time data.

Google Analytics is completely free and simple to use. There’s really no reason not to have a basic understanding of how your website works.

The importance of Digital Analytics in marketing

Digital analytics gives a strong foundation of real facts on which to build your marketing framework. Without it, you’re constructing uncharted territory. Digital marketing analyses real data to determine what’s working and what isn’t in the context of company goals, and creates strategies to exploit the good and improve the not-so-good so you may expand as rapidly and effectively as your business objectives require.

Biggest MarTech Challenges –

  1. Marketers may get complacent due to factors such as prior success or reluctance to risk. According to a survey conducted in the United States, just 25% of marketers utilized AI and prediction marketing in their efforts. Many industry experts in the Asia Pacific consider complacency among marketers’ most significant challenges.
  2. According to one report, more than half of marketers believe redundancy is one of the most significant impediments to developing their MarTech stack. With over 7,000 MarTech solutions currently on the market and new services that it offers being released daily, redundancy in the MarTech stack is unavoidable.
  3. Human capital is the single most significant barrier that brands confront when it comes to MarTech. The proper people with experience, knowledge, and ability to help develop a final MarTech stack are hard to come by, but the demand for this type of tech-savvy marketer has never been greater. Companies are relying on technology to drive campaign effectiveness more than ever before, but without the appropriate people to apply those technologies, the true capacity of their expenditures may never be realized.
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Digital Technology

10 Tech Trends That Will Influence Your Marketing

The year 2022 will see more changes in the field of digital marketing. The following ten trends can be used.

Digital marketing has significantly impacted the world of small businesses, and technological advancements influence the techniques that will work best for connecting with your target market.

The important trends to watch in 2022 are producing more original content, offering chatbot services, optimising for voice search, maximising social media marketing, and developing an engaging user experience.

Depending on your industry and business, you’ll need to carefully consider which trends will benefit you the most and which ones you should steer clear of.

Each year, there are new technical trends that business owners should be aware of. Business owners that remain on top of trends may even achieve new marketing heights. Here are 10 trends that, in our opinion, small enterprises should seize in 2022:

  1. Authentic long-form content

Authentic content is a potent marketing strategy for small enterprises with limited resources. You should also make it long-form, though. While TikTok and Instagram’s three- to five-minute reels dominated the year 2021, the trend is starting to turn around in 2022 with 1,000–7,500 word articles becoming the standard.

This holds true for blog entries, articles, videos, and audio content. A fantastic strategy to increase brand awareness and client loyalty is to share information on subjects that your audience finds interesting. By demonstrating that you care about more than merely a transaction, you can earn someone’s trust.

Whether your material is published as a blog post, an email newsletter, or a social media post, make sure to strike a balance between advertising your items and offering insightful, useful guidance.

  1. Conversational AI and chatbots

Nearly 42% of consumers utilise conversational AI and chatbots for purchases, according to revenue acceleration platform Drift’s State of Conversational Marketing research.  But according to a poll of small business owners, majority of them, technology wasn’t used. Even if you’re focused on other activities, chatbots and more advanced conversational AI may answer simple queries from clients whenever they ask them.

According to Joey Penick, vice president of marketing at Lumen Technologies, “AI-powered chatbots can be utilised for customer assistance, expanding contact strategy considerably with a regulated message.” The ability to collect, analyse, and deliver actionable data that can be utilised to improve the customer experience is an additional benefit of these chatbots, which have gotten so lifelike that many customers can’t tell the difference.

  1. Voice lookup

Voice search is one area where your small business may differentiate itself from the competition as mobile devices and voice services like Microsoft Cortana and Google Assistant gain in popularity. In 2022 and beyond, there is a higher likelihood that customers who conduct business online may discover your website or content marketing materials through voice search.

As the use of mobile devices increased, we had to react a few years ago, according to Chris Hornak, owner of Blog Hands. “And now, over 50% [of searches] are conducted on mobile devices, according to Google. Voice searches, which already account for 20% of mobile searches and are predicted to expand at a comparable rate to mobile, will require marketers to start reacting.

According to Hornak, a straightforward strategy you may use in 2022 is to answer queries buyers regularly ask about your product on your website. Keep in mind to be conversational and informative in your responses.

  1. Data mining

According to Curtis Tingle, senior vice president of product for intelligent media delivery startup Valassis, the majority of brands prioritise data analytics, but marketers still have a ways to go.

He remarked, “Marketers must learn how to use the data they collect more effectively.” Customers regularly provide personal information to the businesses they interact with, including information about their purchasing habits, favourite items, and the most effective ways to contact them through advertising and marketing initiatives. Customers who submit their data want something in return, whether it be more individualised advertising or specifically tailored coupons and promotions.

Tingle made a crucial observation: Marketers must go beyond data collection. Businesses must use the data to develop marketing strategies, and the data must have value.

Predictive data, smarter, scalable, and more adaptable datasets, edge computing for speedier analysis, and hybrid computing, which combines off-premises and on-premises cloud solutions, are the key trends for 2022. For enhanced decision-making, business management, insights, and automation, you’ll also see an increasing use of machine learning-driven solutions, such as augmented analytics, engineering decision analytics, and data visualisation.

  1. Social media promotion

Social media will keep playing a crucial role in successful businesses’ digital marketing initiatives. Expect video, Instagram, livestreaming, and podcasts to rule the list in 2022. Facebook has staying power; it is not going anywhere. LinkedIn will also gain more clout as influencers use it to amp up their voices, in particular.

Speaking of influencers, 2022 will usher in the era of subject matter experts with smaller but more devoted fan bases. What matters is the niche, and those who rule the barren expanse of little to no competition will set the pace.

  1. New e-commerce sectors

The centre of e-commerce trends is Web3, where companies leverage DeFi trends to elevate their profiles. Decentralized finance, or “DeFi,” refers to blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a brand-new realm of commerce performed through the blockchain with cutting-edge marketing prospects.

Technologies like the shared P2P ledger, for example, provide faster, less expensive, more secure, and transparent commercial transactions. Smart contracts on the blockchain are available to validate, ensure, and enforce transactions. Naturally, cryptocurrency, or digital currencies, can also be used in place of traditional currency to appeal to diverse types of customers.

For instance, the New York-based Magnum Real Estate Group recently listed three retail condos on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for Bitcoin. At the same time, blockchain technology provides agents with genuine chances to network and share their knowledge while also earning money.

NFTs, specially generated digital assets, are another emerging strategy being used by brands to sell their goods.

  1. User encounter

Modern customers demand a smooth, enjoyable, and engaging online experience, whether they are shopping online or browsing a website. Expect to see a stronger push toward an engaging and seamless user experience in 2022, with a focus on interactive, experiential, practical, and tailored encounters.

Aylon Steinhart, founder and CEO of Eclipse Foods, stated that they are aware that users enjoy interesting information that speaks to them personally. “We are working toward developing a marketing approach that draws users in depending on page experience. The best user experience, however, is about speed, visual stability, mobile friendliness, and secure browsing, not just producing engaging content that draws consumers in. The visibility and engagement of content marketing strategies will rise with the implementation of these methods.

  1. The metaverse

Today’s futuristic fusion of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI) is known as the metaverse. It results in a new 3D immersive experience where users can mix the actual world with the virtual world.

Examples include NASCAR’s interactive commercials on the online game platform Roblox. Users can design their own avatars so they can virtually “enjoy” things without really purchasing them. Because of this, the marketing sector now has a new term for the practise of using gaming to promote products: “gamevertising.” The music and film industries are dominated by this trend of “gamevertising,” claims technology agency Wunderman Thompson.

On the retail frontier, companies also leverage technology like augmented reality to create hybrid shopping experiences where customers, through virtual avatars, can “try on” items, “sit” on chairs, “live” in particular physical places, and so forth.

  1. A World Without Cookies

Numerous concerns regarding the privacy of data collection have been raised during the last two years. In order to address this issue, Google is a leader in the advertising technology sector with its cookieless future, which is expected to debut in 2023. Google will introduce new technologies and promote the phase-out of test cookies near the end of 2022. While cookies rely on user-provided data like personal emails to function, cookie substitutes will need to have vast amounts of high-quality first-party data to work.

How does this impact companies, marketers, and advertisers? In the near future, as consumer privacy concerns and rules like the GDPR develop, prudent organisations will want to take heed of a situation where cookies are replaced by cookie replacements.

  1. Keywords and SEO

The advantages of SEO and keyword tactics are still present. The Page Experience Algorithm from Google is scheduled to debut in March 2022. The SEO Tool will evaluate a variety of criteria, including HTTPS security, visual stability, interaction, and loading speed.

Google is also focusing on mobile, using its just-launched Mobile-First Indexing (MFI) to rank webpages that are responsive to mobile devices. This requires marketers to concentrate on the UX on mobile devices at least as much as they do on websites. Publishers are being encouraged by Google’s new Multitask Unified Model (MUM) to offer more complicated responses to straightforward questions. MUM honours reliable material.

Relevance of Fundamental Marketing Concepts

These trends are anticipated to have an impact on marketing in 2022 and beyond, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop doing what you’re doing right away and start employing newer, more cutting-edge technology.

Despite what everyone claims, according to Allen Adamson, adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and co-founder of Metaforce, “the fundamental concepts of how you promote and establish a brand haven’t altered in the past 10 or 15 years.” “Overall, technology has done nothing more than magnify what has always been true.”

Even if sophisticated new marketing technologies are introduced every year, word-of-mouth advertising is still important, according to Adamson. Consumers might have consulted their friends decades ago to find out where to get the best hamburger in town. Adamson claims that nowadays, individuals “ask all their friends” by conducting a simple internet search and reading testimonials of burger restaurants nearby.

The fundamental principles of marketing have not changed as a result of technological advancements, yet the latter magnifies both successes and failures. When a customer received a subpar burger in the past, the disgruntled customer might have advised their friend not to eat there. A negative Yelp review can now turn away hundreds of potential customers.

Understanding new technological tools can considerably aid your business, but it’s pointless to add new tools to the mix if you don’t grasp how they can help you. As the chairman of Landor Associates for North America, Adamson provided consulting services to organisations like Marriott and HBO. He claimed that many businesses focus too much on the newest and best marketing techniques.

“It’s just a ball, and no one is on defence, so it’s kind of like seeing 8-year-olds play soccer,” he added. “Everyone is pursuing the new, shiny thing. Whatever technology you get, if you don’t know how to use it very well, it won’t give you a competitive advantage in the market.

Some of the trends mentioned in this article may not require you to take any action. The use of more authentic content or the addition of a chatbot to your present marketing mix, on the other hand, may help your company reach a new level of client engagement and financial success.

How to Select the Latest Marketing Technology to Use

The requirements of your company and the preferences of your consumers will determine the technology you choose to use in your operation. If you don’t grasp the technology and can’t use it correctly but are nevertheless adopting a new marketing trend because other companies are, you could be better off not doing so.

According to Ryan Gould, vice president of strategy and marketing services at Elevation Marketing, “although we’re going faster and faster toward a tech-dominant world, small and midsize enterprises need to prioritise the technological trends that they can utilise for higher business growth.” What makes them do that? They should inquire about the following four things:

Who is my target audience?

What and where are the gaps in my business?

Will this technology aid in bridging my company’s gaps?

“Do I have the money to keep using this technology long-term?”

You can avoid overly embracing a marketing trend that isn’t appropriate for your company by using Gould’s questions as a check. Take note of the marketing trends for 2022, but before you do anything, carefully assess where your company is.

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Digital Technology

7 digital marketing technologies to help you raise your game

Technology plays an important role in everyone’s life, from how we socialise to how we obtain things. Technology in marketing, in particular, is thriving and evolving into a digital form of art. It may assist you in improving the quality of one’s production times and, as an outcome, generating more contacts, irrespective of what you sell or to whom you sell.

Marketers who respond and adopt new tech are better able to personalise, engage, and communicate with their customers and prospects. The batch and strike days are fading as systems improve at targeting and forecasting consumer and business behaviour.

These are the technologies that will help you with your digital marketing business-

  1. REPORTING –

According to the research study, one of the main aims for 40% of marketing firms is to demonstrate the ROI of marketing. Marketers are pressured to demonstrate the value of their efforts to the firm, and marketing is now a numbers game.

Most tools and platforms, from social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to particular marketing solutions like Hootsuite, provide detailed statistics. Google Data Studio uses real-time data from YouTube, Google Ads, and Google Analytics to help you create dynamic, interactive dashboards. It also integrates with third-party data sources such as Twitter, MailChimp, and Salesforce. Customers can use Google Data Studio to create fully customizable, filterable, and easy to share reports.

  1. AI POWERED AUTOMATION –

Will the year 2022 mark the rise of robots? 

We have already witnessed remarkable advancements in AI over the previous few years, as well as a significant increase in the number of firms employing AI-powered automation to support their marketing initiatives.

One of the key technologies powering voice search and smart assistants is AI. Additionally, the use of chatbots is growing and appearing on more websites.

AI and automation are taking some of the labour out of marketing, allowing businesses to focus on techniques that provide a better consumer experience.

Big data, aided by predictive analytics, can also help marketers learn more about their customers, leading to increased customer acquisition. It recently enabled hyper-personalization and scalability marketing messaging.

It should be noted that the human part of marketing is still crucial. Therefore, the objective is to increase marketing efforts rather than to take the place of the people who are actually responsible for them.

  1. SEO –

The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to stay visible on search engine results pages. Google’s algorithms are continually evolving, so at times it may seem like a mysterious science. The real challenge is adapting your SEO to these changes and remaining competitive, as keeping up with these changes is difficult enough.

Tools like Moz and Deep Crawl aid in the success of SEO. They can track keyword ranks on PC and mobile devices, allowing customers to conveniently track any current keywords. This in-depth keyword research is complemented by other factors including link building and possibilities, site audits, search visibility score, and page insights. They are tools with features such as backlink tracking, device breakdowns, ad hoc keyword research, and more.

  1. LIVE VIDEOS –

By 2027, it is anticipated that the live video streaming market would be worth 184.3 billion. Individuals enjoy live streaming because they can view actual footage, watch behind-the-scenes films, and interact live with industry professionals.

The technology is helpful for business since it increases consumer awareness and interest in their brands. Live videos are already being invested in by several businesses. Many other companies fund live product demonstrations from social media influencers while some organise live Q&A sessions.

Having said that, global watch time for live programming increased by 250% in 2020.

  1. EMAIL MARKETING –

With so much competition, you must ensure that your emails are optimised to stand out from the crowd. Great email marketing is about more than just open rates; it’s also about click-throughs and conversions. You need to provide real value in your emails in order to engage recipients and get them to open them.

Tools such as MailChimp, SendinBlue, and Omnisend allow you to automate your email marketing so that you can focus on strategy and ensure that your emails provide value to your target audience. MailChimp automates email marketing with simple A/B testing, ready-to-use campaign templates, and a simple email designer, allowing you to focus on strategy and ensuring that your emails add value to the target audience. ‘MailChimp reports’ make it simple to track how effective your emails are at engaging recipients using advanced segmentation for precise targeting, distribution by time zone and comparative data reporting.

  1. SOCIAL MEDIA – 

You may build your company’s brand via social media, interact with current customers, and reach out to new audiences. It enhances thought leadership, SEO, and allows customers to communicate directly with your business. Despite this, most businesses spend countless hours managing social media without knowing exactly how to increase their ROI.

Social media may be used to strengthen your brand’s identity, reach out to current customers, and find new audiences. Most organisations already know this, but they invest hours in social media management without having a good idea of how to get a return on their investment.

If you want more visibility on your social channels, detailed insights into what works and what doesn’t, or more control over publishing posts through automation and scheduling, these tools can change the game.

  1. VOICE SEARCH – 

Every year, technology appears to improve, and speech recognition is no exception.

It’s no surprise that hundreds of additional voice command devices are sold every day throughout the world. If you haven’t started focused on voice search as a digital marketer yet, you’re missing on a sizable portion of your audience.

Also remember, when people use voice search, they hardly ever search for short terms and use full sentences instead. Mostly, I like how they usually speak.

If people are asking “how to bake a cake with a microwave” and if you are in the food business, you should be optimising your content based on similar responses. Long-tail and question-and-answer-based keywords are your holy grail in 2022.

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Digital Technology Featured

Why Conversational AI Becomes A Priority In 2021?

2020 has seen a great boom in the use of chatbots across the industrial sector. Chatbots are full of advantages to provide undeniable experience for customer services. So, conversational AI is an integral part of business practices across all industries.

The role of chatbots is not limited to customer services only. Although they are recommended for customer support. Conversational Bots are helpful to promote marketing and sales activities.

Since chatbots are a small application of conversational AI. Conversational Intelligence has a much wider scope. It compiles the trending technologies and utilizing the mix for variant purposes. Artificial Intelligence has captured a significant share in conversational marketing.

“What” & “Why” paves a path towards the Conversational AI trends for 2021. And, also, to the reason why it is a priority for the major section of the industry.

What Is Conversational AI?

The set of technologies that help simulate the conversational environment is coined as conversational AI. These sets of instructions are used in conjunction with Virtual agents like bots to make them capable of understanding the intent and tone of the words framed together into a sentence and then process a response to the text or voice message and reply in natural ways. Therefore, Conversational AI accommodates the interaction between peoples and complex systems.

Why Conversational AI Is In-Demand?

The systems and processes are getting more complex. Because of the increasing technical demands in the industry. And it gets difficult for the non-technical users to navigate through the complex problems without any expert help. The use of chatbots at the forefront eases the movement of the user when surfing or shopping online. It is a step ahead towards betterment. Customer experience is the priority for the industries now. Hence, the customer experience will be simpler and more intuitive. (Only by replacing the traditional UIs with the conversational dialog boxes).

Why Conversational AI Becomes A Priority In 2021?

1. Manages Dialog Turns & Twists

A normal human conversation is full of uncertainties. Each dialog in conversation is capable of changing the flow of conversation further. Understanding these turning points is the major goal of inducing Natural Language Processing techniques into AI applications. Hence, the Conversational AI concept manages instant pauses, rollbacks, or repetitive conversations. It also provides a fluent hassle-free experience to the users.

2. Context Management

Since we are talking of bots, we can’t be sure that the bot you chatted with a month ago still remembers the highlights. Neither we can be sure it will continue the conversation from the same endpoint. But Conversational AI knows that every conversation has some context involved. And it is also aware that context levies the importance of information. Conversational AI holds the context from past conversations. Because of this, it can resume the conversation from the same endpoint. For example, user information, preferences, queries, etc.

3. Sentiment Analysis

Conversational AI makes bots capable of analyzing the emotion and tone of the conversation by breaking down the sentences/phrases into singular words. Each word or utterance is then further analyzed considering the key triggers, connotations, and placement in the sentence. You can count them as individual metrics that combined together to define the type and intensity of the emotion conveyed through the conversation.

4. Multilingual Support

Conversational AI supports almost every language. Hence, contributing to your business growth by giving you access to understand the intent of individuals across the globe. Online stores can integrate a chatbot that provides multiple language support without any translator. Read more

5. Rapid Industry Adoption

The introduction of chatbots in the commercial industry has captured every sector from marketing promotions to customer support. Automating business processes in certain sectors allows the marketers and owners to focus on the more critical issues that can’t be taken care of under bots for now at least. With Conversational AI, bots are one step ahead of the artificially intelligent earth.

6. Behavioral Analytics For Bots

Chatbots employed by the industries have fetched them huge user data, performance, and/or other metadata. But, if data is not providing any information, it is useless. Hence deciphering the information contained in the data and delivering significant insights is what is required. And Conversational AI is capable of doing so. Conversational AI-based analytics provides a visual representation of the user journey via plotting the flow of dialog in the conversation between the user and the bot. These flows define user behavior. Further, it can also determine the intention of the user.

7. Machine to Machine Conversations

We can’t skip IoT since we’re talking about intelligent technology behind the smart devices. Internet of Things or IoT enables the machine to machine conversation by creating a data-sharing network. Conversational AI plays a vital role in deciphering the information shared between machines. And vital information shared with the man via conversation too. In other words, Conversational AI is the mediator. It supports the conversation between the man and machines without any manual help.

8. Voice Assistants

Conversational AI caters to resolve the communication hindrances too. Voice assistants are the chatbot capable of conversing with the human. Rather by talking instead of typing long sentences. Amazon Echo, Google Home, etc. are the real-existing examples of voice assistants. Hence, supporting the hands-free conversation.

Summing Up!

The use and trends of Chatbots use cases have been widely embraced in 2020. And there is no doubt that it will proliferate in 2021 as well. Since the use of chatbots is not restricted to any particular sector or industry type. Any enterprise can enjoy this technology.

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Digital Technology

TOP 10 CHATBOTS TO LOOKOUT FOR IN 2021 AND BEYOND

Analytics Insight has listed top 10 chatbots to watch out for in 2021

Companies are trying every possible way to meet customers’ expectation. Yet another way that enhances their relationship with customers is coming up with chatbot, a software that’s capable of carrying out conversations with the customers. What better than being addressed to your issue at any instant of time? Right from responding to your queries to offering you the best, chatbots have got you covered. Chatbots are employed to improve customer engagement and reduce customer support expenses as well. They are an excellent way to automate most of the customer interactions. If you’ve been hunting for the best chatbots then have your task is done for you’ve landed at the right place. Read on to know which the best chatbots are and what is so unique about each one of them.

10 Best Chatbots to look for in 2021

Who wouldn’t want to improve customer engagement to boost up sales? Now that we are well aware of the fact that chatbots aid in improving customer interaction, learning about the best platforms does make every possible sense. Here’s a list of 10 best chatbots of 2021.

• AcquireAcquire is an AI-powered chatbot. This works round the clock and aims to solve all the customer queries. There are some questions that are most frequently asked. It is here that Acquire comes into play. It answers these queries of the users. Since, the most commonly asked queries are addressed by the bots, the agents can now handle other complex questions. This is a no nonsense chatbot. All that you’ve to do is decide your goals, purpose of the chatbot, and then set up a custom workflow.

• OMQ chatbot: OMQ chatbot is a self-learning AI-powered chatbot platform. The main purpose of designing this is to reduce the workload of the agents who deal with customers on a regular basis. OMQ chatbot is linked to the central knowledge base. It is capable enough of understanding the query or issue of the customer and responding with the most suitable answer. If it finds the issue to be too complex to handle, it directs the same to an agent.

• Netomi: This chatbot aims to deliver the highest accuracy due to its advanced Natural Language Understanding (NLU) engine. This platform boasts of an out-of-the-box integration with most of the leading agent desk platforms. This is available in a variety of languages and supports analytics and real time reporting as well.

• Watson Assistant: This chatbot, developed by IBM, makes into the list of the most advanced AI-powered chatbots in the market. Watson Assistant holds the potential to keep a track of the users’ historical chat or call logs. If it is not able to address the issue at its best, it can ask the customers for more clarity and also direct them to human representatives, if necessary.

• Ada: Ada is yet another AI-powered chatbot that’s ruling the market. It comes with a drag-and-drop feature. This chatbot platform allows the users to add GIFs to certain messages, and the companies can make the best of their customer data. Ada holds the potential to send personalized content to the customers and also ask for customer feedback. Using this feedback, the companies can work better.

• ChatterOn: It is one of those AI-powered chatbots using which one can create Facebook Messenger chatbots without coding. Hence, this is no less than a saviour for non-technical users. This bot is self-learning thereby making it agile and adaptable.

• Aivo: This is one of those excellent platforms that enables you to communicate with your customers in real-time via text or voice. It is flexible enough to the extent that it can adapt itself to the rules. It promises to deliver a seamless and a high-quality experience.

• Rulai: Ruali is an AI-powered chatbot for enterprise brands. It has several advantages – it is capable of predicting the behaviour of the users, can understand the context of a conversation, know what the preferences of the customers are, can take actions accordingly. If it is not clear with something then it can also ask customers for more clarification.

• Sequel: This chatbot platform has a range of chatbot templates to offer. One can customize the template as well using the drag and drop interface. It is built on NLP and engages the users in a great manner.

• Botsify: It is a Facebook chatbot platform. It caters to integrating other chatbots into your system. The best part of this is that it is apt for non-technical users. Additionally, its basic version is available for free. The only drawback is that it cannot handle multiple entities to be correlated with one phrase.

All in all, Chatbots are an added advantage for your company. The right chatbot can save your time, money, and help you make better decisions.

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Digital Technology Featured

Top 7 Marketing Automation Predictions for 2021

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. The time when we close the balance for the current year and start planning for the next one. Can you imagine 2021 marketing without automation? No one can! But this doesn’t mean that we don’t need to be prepared for what the future holds in store for 2021.

So let’s take a close look at the top marketing automation predictions for 2021. There has been enough uncertainty this year to warrant extra attention to being prepared in the next one, don’t you think?

In fact, the uncertainty that shrouded most of 2020 lays the foundation for what will happen in marketing automation in 2021. With most businesses going fully digital or moving most of their operations online, the need for marketing automation software has increased exponentially.

And this is not something that will change too soon.

Marketing Automation Predictions for 2021

Digital marketing was largely viewed as a must-have strategy by most marketers even before the pandemic. Seventy-eight percentof marketers believe that digital marketing was the key to their marketing efforts successful.

People turned to their devices with studies showing that device usage leaped by 16 percent in a single day in the US! Everyone is online (still!) so there has never been a better time to polish your marketing automation strategy.

1. Video Marketing on the Rise

Image source: ClipChamp

Video marketing is not a new concept — it stuck around because it works. Everyone loves watching a relevant, entertaining video.

Statistics show that 85 percent of internet users watch video content and it is estimated that the average person will be spending 100 minutes a day watching online videos in 2021.

They are easy to follow and when done right, educational too. There are several video types that you can use to reach your targeted market. For instance, some people have turned to vlog to reach their audience.

Recorded or live Q&As are also extremely popular and will continue to be this way. These are great for interacting with your audience. Q&As are more informative and don’t seem like sales so you can attract people to your business easily.

In the last couple of months, webinars have become increasingly becoming popular. This is because webinars are engaging and educative. They are a great way to build a connection with your audience. Using videos for marketing can be done in a variety of ways, including through social media networks like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

Ninety-three percent of companies say that their video content helped them to get new customers, with 63 percent of businesses saying that they get the best ROIs through their videos.

One of the best things about video marketing is that, even though you can’t automate production, you can definitely automate its distribution. There are dozens of social media management tools to help you distribute your video content automatically. Just schedule the post and go on with your day.

The same goes for sharing your video content with your email subscribers. Schedule a campaign in your favorite automation tool and go back to your dashboard to see how it performed.

Pro tip: leverage marketing automation for a video like a pro. Schedule your most important videos to be published at different times on different days. Why? Organic reach on social media is low, so posting a video just once means that you’ll only reach a small fraction of your audience. Play with different times of the day to catch bigger chunks of your fan base, especially if you cater to an international audience, in multiple time zones.

2. Automate for the Non-Linear Buyer Journey

Image Source: Fourth Source

Remember, when we all used to rely on a clear customer journey: awareness, consideration, decision. That’s it! Start creating content and campaigns for each stage.

Well, not anymore. Today’s customer journey is complex and unpredictable. Sometimes, they will narrow down their search to a single brand only to expand it again minutes later.

With more time to spend online researching options, consumers are becoming more and more aware that they are in charge of the process and that they don’t have to give in to remarketing ads or persistent email campaigns.

What can you do?

Automate, but smartly.

Invest in marketing automation software that allows you to have a 360-degree view of the customer’s behavior and cross-reference reports. Integration is your best friend here: integrating your CRM with your marketing automation tool (for instance, Salesforce with Mailchimp), you can send hyper-targeted and relevant messages to your contacts.

Marketing automation in 2021 has to respond to the customers’ demands: less generic campaigns, more personalization, and more relevance.

3. Email Marketing Automation Meets Cross-Channel Strategies

Image source: Profit Works

It feels like email marketing has been around since the beginning of time. But just because it’s rather old, it doesn’t mean it’s any less significant.

Marketing automation has taken an email to the next level.

Email marketing has progressed over the years and it has now become more personalized and tailored to every recipient’s needs. Nowadays, it has all been hyper-simplified. All you need is your email address, and the rest can happen on auto-pilot.

Email marketing automation will also get a significant upgrade in 2021. Forget about siloed marketing tactics and integrate email with your business goals in 2021 and beyond.

How can that happen?

When you integrate your email platform with your CRM or ESP, you get a birds-eye-view of your customer’s profile. This means that you can (and should!) set automated campaigns for:

  • Thank you notes after purchases
  • Recipient’s birthday
  • Reminders for clients who usually purchase things at regular intervals (for instance: “Hey, it’s time to refill your cat food bag”)
  • Very specific segments: import data from your CRM into your email marketing platform to know, for instance, who will attend what class in your gym. Then proceed to send automated emails to those people alone.

4. AI (Artificial Intelligence) Use on the Rise

No, this is not about the kind of artificial intelligence you see in movies. This breed of AI is specifically made for businesses. It is meant to make processes and operations easier.

Let’s look at two kinds of marketing automation AI. Despite the low uptake of AI in business over the years, 2021 will most likely see a spike in usage.

Image Source: Datamation

  • Conversational AI

Most of the behavior patterns that consumers follow when looking to make a purchase, like asking friends and family for referrals, checking out reviews, or online researching, have made their way into the business world. A lot of research is done before the potential buyer goes to your site.

Conversational AI is here to help with that. It is an artificial intelligence technology that powers chatbots to respond to inputs.

In short, this technology looks for a way to narrow down where a potential buyer is in their buying process and what are the next steps they should take. This can be done by asking questions to website visitors while they are still on your site, for instance.

AI makes it easy for a customer to navigate through your website, making it easy for them to get what they are looking for instead of wasting their time going through everything.

It also shortens the sales cycle and leaves your website visitors more fulfilled. In short, AI (in marketing automation) can improve your chat conversion rates significantly.

Image Source: Target Marketing

  • AI for email

Email marketing also uses artificial intelligence to make email tasks easier. Email service providers offer AI-based tools that you can easily adjust to make it specific to your brand’s needs.

If your goal is to increase your click rate and conversion rate for your campaigns, 2021 is the year when you should consider AI for email. It is going to help you organize your campaigns by making it possible to send specific emails to the recipients who need them.

Artificial intelligence can create algorithms that optimize content according to the price, relevance, display order, etc., and send it to each subscriber catering to their needs.

AI for email considers a subscriber’s behavior on your website, looking at how they respond to messages, their social media activities, and purchase histories, among other factors to know where their interests lie.

Once it has narrowed down a subscriber’s interest, AI now filters these interests to find the one email that will fit the customer’s needs. It then proceeds to send it to them.

When people receive offers they are interested in, it creates better customer engagement and increases sales for your company. Email AI is still evolving and increasingly becoming easier to use, even for small businesses. This is the kind of marketing automation prediction for 2021 that you can use to grow your business starting right now.

5. Better Personalization Fueled by Marketing Automation

Yes, personalization takes center stage in 2021 and beyond. But personalization without marketing automation is a nightmare. Can you imagine emailing everyone in your list separately, so you can add personalized information in each email?

It’s OK, you don’t even have to go there. Marketing automation can do this for you. And, in 2021, it goes beyond adding the recipient’s name.

New developments in marketing automation will allow you to deliver hyper-personalized messages across channels. In fact, this will be the norm starting with next year.

Picture this: you have a loyal customer who follows you on two social networks and orders from you regularly. They sometimes also use your website chat or call your support department. How do you which channel works best when you try to reach them?

Marketing automation will take that off your plate. Coupled with AI and cross-dashboard views, you will be able to know which is their favorite channel and send personalized, automated messages.

6. Integration Is no Longer “Nice to Have”. It’s a Must.

Integration helps bring together different facets of your business to work as one efficient tool. It’s not just sales and marketing that will live prosperously under the same “roof” (read: dashboard). It’s also accounting, IT, operations, customer support, and more. Pretty much everything that counts towards your business goals can be brought together in a single dashboard using iPaaS or integration services.

Come 2021, SaaS and iPaaS will become increasingly popular for obvious reasons. These tried-and-tested solutions will enable industries affected by the crisis to transit effortlessly and seamlessly into the new normal.

Integration is a crucial marketing automation prediction for 2021 because it marks the end of siloed business operations and the beginning of seamless transitions between departments and channels.

As iPaaS services evolve, they bring easy-to-use interfaces that come with a plethora of benefits for both the companies using them and for their customers.

7. Offline Conversion Tracking

While acknowledging that almost everything is turning digital, let’s not forget that brick-and-mortar stores will continue to exist. Only they will have an online presence, too.

But in the era of seamless communication across channels, you can’t afford to keep the two separate. This is where offline conversion tracking comes in.

To achieve this, some companies have been using promotional codes, coupons, sensors, and other means to translate digital marketing and in-store foot traffic into sales.

Image Source: Marketing Land

Google uses features like geo-targeting to show potential customers and uses product searches to determine conversion rates. Facebook uses data from customers with location services to show local store advertisements.

Marketing automation tools can now give you combined insights from all your customer touchpoints. Neatly grouped in a single dashboard, they will fuel your growth through data-driven campaigns.

Conclusion

With the new changes looming on the corner, a lot has to be changed for businesses to perform well in the coming year. The above marketing automation predictions for 2021 are just some of the ways to ensure your business thrives.

Investing in the right marketing automation now will mean you have a leg up before the next business year begins.

Take your time and evaluate your options and marketing efforts. Find better and more efficient ways to interact with your customers so that you can cater to their needs. Digital marketing is an ever-changing field and you need to adapt with time using the right strategy and tools.

While marketing automation is great, it’s not everything you need. The human touch is also important, perhaps more important than ever. Even if you can automate every email and social media campaign, remember to always humanize them. A hand-written thank-you note sent along with the order can turn a first-time buyer into a loyal customer for life.

Remember that catering to customers’ needs means understanding them first. So take the time to do that. Analytics reports in marketing automation get more refined every year, so you have the perfect opportunity to dig deep into customers’ behavior and adjust your strategy according to it.

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Digital Technology

Mobile App or Website? 10 Reasons Why Apps are Better

So the mobile era is here—The number of mobile users today is greater than the number of desktop users!

Consequently, businesses have realized the need to effectively use mobile channels to attract customers. But, that’s not enough. They also need to optimize their mobile apps and websites to improve user experience and outdo their conversion rates so they can make the most of this channel. 

While some businesses employ both mobile websites and apps, other companies might have to choose one of them. The choice between mobile apps and websites depends on their cost, usability, required features, and the audience they serve.

That being said, studies show that users prefer mobile apps more than mobile websites. This makes for a strong reason to create mobile apps for reaching out to potential (and existing) customers.

In addition, there are various other reasons that make mobile apps better than mobile websites.

Following is our list of the top 10:

#1 Mobile apps offer better personalization

Personalization is about offering tailored communication to users based on their interests, location, usage behavior, and more.

With mobile apps, it’s easy to treat users with a personalized experience. Using a mobile app A/B testing tool, you can also test out different experiences for your customers.

Mobile apps can let users set up their preferences at the start, based on which users can be served with customized content. Apps can also track and observe customer engagement, and use it to offer custom recommendations and updates to the users. Furthermore, they can also identify the location of the users in real-time to provide geography-specific content.

However, improving user experience is not the only purpose that personalization serves. It can also help improve the conversion rate of apps.

When users are pampered with personalized content, they have a higher chance of converting as it offers a human touch as opposed to generic content which comes across as rather robotic or automated. 

#2 Ease of sending notifications

For the last couple of decades, email has been the most widely-used business communication tool. Businesses have extensively used email (some almost abused it) to reach out to their users. As a result, email has lost the effectiveness it once had; its open rates and click rates have constantly dropped[1].

Well, there’s no reason to worry.

Enter mobile app notifications.

These notifications are of two types: push and in-app notifications. Both are exciting alternatives for communicating with app users in a far less intrusive manner.

The ability to send instant, non-intrusive notifications to users is so desired that it is one of the major reasons why many businesses want to have a mobile app in the first place.

In-app notifications are the notifications that users can only receive when they have opened an app. Push notifications, on the other hand, are those notifications that users can receive regardless of any activity they are doing on their mobile device.

There have been instances where the push medium of notifications has delivered click-through rates of 40%. In case you chose to stick with a mobile website or are running one while building an app, you can send your push notifications with VWO Engage.

Sign up for a free trial and see how easy it is to send notifications to both desktop and mobile users.

#3 Making use of mobile device features

Mobile apps have the advantage of utilizing features of a mobile device like camera, contact list, GPS, phone calls, accelerometer, compass, etc.

Such device features, when used within an app, can make the user experience interactive and fun.

Moreover, these features can also reduce the efforts users would have to make otherwise. For instance, users completing a form on a banking app might need to submit their photograph for completion of the process. The app can let users take the help of the camera of their mobile device to capture and submit a photograph.

The device features can significantly shorten the time users take to perform a certain task in an app, and can even boost conversions.

Note: Mobile websites can also use some features of a mobile device like camera, GPS, etc. Still, there are technological constraints and privacy concerns in utilizing multimedia features of a device (which mobile apps can use).

#4 Ability to work offline

It is probably the most fundamental difference between a mobile website and an app.

Although apps too might require internet connectivity to perform most of their tasks, they can still offer basic content and functionality to users in offline mode.

Let’s take the example of a banking app again.

The app can provide features like tax calculation, installment calculation, and determination of loan limits. These features can work even without the help of an internet connection.

Note: Even though mobile websites can use caching to load web pages without an internet connection, they can only offer limited functions.

#5 Freedom in designing

Even with all the technological advancements in web designing, mobile websites have to rely a lot on browsers to perform even the most elementary functions. Mobile websites depend on browser features like ‘back button,’ ‘refresh button,’ and ‘address bar’ to work.

Mobile apps don’t have any of these restrictions.

A mobile app can be designed with a lot of elaborate functions, based on advanced gestures like ‘tap,’ ‘swipe,’ ‘drag,’ ‘pinch,’ ‘hold,’ and more.

Apps can use these gestures to offer innovative functionality that can help users perform a task better. For example, an app can let users move to a next or previous step using the swipe gesture.

#6 New branding experience

Since a mobile app is distinct from a company’s website, it has the liberty of offering a new brand experience to users. It means that the company can experiment with new branding styles for the app, which can be different from the regular brand style of the company’s website (or the company altogether).

Going a step further, companies can build mobile apps specifically to transition into a new brand style for themselves.

Additionally, a mobile app can also allow users to customize its appearance, as per users’ liking. This can further help on the personalization front of the app.

Note: The concept of microsites works on similar lines. Microsites offer a distinct brand experience to users, as compared to their parent sites. They are often used to promote a sub-brand, an event, or a newly-launched service.

Related postA Cheat Sheet on Using Microsites to Build Traffic

#7 Users spend more time on Apps

Mobile users spend 86% of their time[2] on mobile apps and just 14% of the time on mobile websites.

Moreover, a study by eMarketer concluded that users spend more than 90% of their mobile time on apps as opposed to mobile web. 

Note: A point to consider here is that users spend a majority of their time on gaming apps and social media apps.

Note: We also don’t have data telling us which mobile websites users visit more often (out of the 14% of their time mentioned above). Hence, it’s not possible to make a comparison.

#8 New stream of conversions

If you’re looking to increase conversions, mobile apps can be a great medium to push users down the conversion funnel.

Mobile apps can be used to acquire both top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) users.

For instance, utility apps can bring-in ToFu users, which can be later nurtured into BoFu leads. On the other hand, apps like eCommerce already have BoFu users, who have a higher possibility of converting.

Add-on: Since mobile apps are much more targeted in nature (through their content and utility), they can be used to tap specific users in the funnel. Mobile websites, in contrast, reach out to a diverse set of audiences.

#9 Brand presence

Users spend a substantial amount of their time on mobile devices. It’s safe to say that many of the users encounter the apps they’ve installed on their devices, almost every day. This regular encounter can be viewed as a branding opportunity for the apps[3].

Even when users are not actively using a mobile app, they are still reminded of the brand associated with the app. The icon of the app acts like a mini-advertisement for the brand.

The presence of an app on a users’ device helps influence user’s perception about a brand, subconsciously.

This user behavior can be linked to the Signal Detection Theory, which suggests that users process even those ads which they’ve ignored at some level in their minds.

#10 Apps can work faster than websites

A well-designed mobile app can perform actions much quicker than a mobile website.

Apps usually store their data locally on mobile devices, in contrast to websites that generally use web servers. For this reason, data retrieval happens swiftly in mobile apps.

Apps can further save users’ time by storing their preferences, and using them to take proactive actions on users’ behalf.

There is also a technical justification as to why mobile apps can work faster—Mobile websites use javascript code to perform most of their functions and the framework that mobile apps use can run almost five times faster than a javascript code! While all this happens in the background, users get to complete actions quicker on the front-end of mobile apps, again contributing to a delightful user experience.

Mobile app v/s mobile site—what should you choose?

Developing both mobile website and mobile app for your business can prove to be a costly affair and you may have to choose one of the two channels, based on your budget and business goals. While both channels have their own pros and cons, mobile apps, especially, can help you get higher conversions and retention. Mobile apps offer greater personalization and operational efficiency, along with multiple other exclusive features.

However, once you’ve designed a slick mobile app, how do you ensure it also delivers on all its promises and drives the intended growth for your business as opposed to being just another channel that you have to manage and maintain? Well, the answer is simple – you test it rigorously. 

Mobile app A/B testing allows you to steadily enhance your in-app user experience by experimenting with features, app flows, and other UI-based changes to improve your engagement, conversion, and retention rate. Therefore, while having an up and running mobile app is definitely the first step towards engaging with a whole new audience segment, optimizing it continuously will help you drive tangible improvements in your key business metrics. VWO Mobile App Testing is a robust mobile experimentation platform that empowers you to build engaging experiences that delight users as well as launch world-class features by mitigating any risk. If you’re unsure how, request a free demo by one of VWO’s experimentation experts to understand how you can leverage VWO Mobile App Testing to improve your app’s key metrics.

Categories
Digital Technology

20 innovative CRM trends for 2021 to pay attention to

In recent years, the CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) has evolved far beyond being just a tool for contact management to offer something for everyone in an organisation.

As 2021 approaches and we move further into the new decade, some key CRM trends will shake up the industry as we know it.

Here are some of our top predictions for CRM in the upcoming year, including rising CRM use from new markets, powerful features and integrations, and the impact of wider tech trends on CRM.

The latest CRM trends for 2021 to pay attention to

1. AI is becoming a key part of CRM systems

If there’s one thing that’s affecting all industries, it’s artificial intelligence (AI). We’re using a lot more AI than we might think in our daily lives as well as at work.

14% of global CIOs have already deployed AI, according to Gartner’s 2019 CIO Agenda survey, and it’s estimated that AI associated with CRM activities will boost global business revenue by $1.1 trillion by the end of 2021.

2. There are fewer barriers for first-time CRM users

65% of sales professionals use a CRM and 97% consider sales technology “very important” or “important”, according to LinkedIn State of Sales 2020.

However, that leaves one third of sales professionals not using CRMs. Common barriers to adopting a CRM include reservations about cost and lacking the resources and tech knowledge to implement a CRM system.

As CRMs continue on their trend of becoming cheaper, simpler to implement and easier to use, these objections are becoming increasingly irrelevant. We forecast a higher percentage of companies adopting CRMs for the first time in 2021.

3. Social CRM keeps rising

What is social CRM? It’s the integration of social media channels into CRM platforms.

By viewing social media and CRM together, companies gain a more powerful overview of what people are posting about them on social media, as well as a clearer understanding of brand sentiment.

If organizations can use social CRM to respond to comments quickly and thoughtfully, they can build stronger relationships with existing and potential customers and incorporate more user feedback into their roadmap.

4. There’s an all-star line-up of CRMs to choose from

Even though Salesforce’s share of the CRM market is over 19%, there’s a huge range of tools competing for consumer attention.

Customers are choosing from a diverse market of over 609 CRM systems, with tools that cater for both generalized needs and specific niches and requirements.

The CRM systems leading the way for user satisfaction right now on G2 are:

  • HubSpot
  • Salesforce
  • Less Annoying CRM
  • Freshsales

5. Businesses can condense their sales and marketing tech stacks

With the rise of sophisticated CRMs and core tech tools, sales and marketing teams can get away with using fewer tools than before.

As a tech trend for 2021, teams will increasingly wonder: why do we pay for App A when App B can now tick that box and more?

For best results from their tech stack, teams will be creating more integrations and two-way syncs to ensure contact data is always updated across all apps.

6. Voice and conversational UI will start integrating with CRM

Voice technology is critical for the evolution of SaaS tools. It’s a key factor for accessibility, but it also simply makes tech easier and more enjoyable to use. According to Adobe’s research on voice technology:

“Almost all users (94%) consider voice technology easy to use and say it does more than save time – it improves their quality of life.”

Technology like Salesforce’s Einstein Voice Assistant is making it easier for salespeople to track, message, update and notify their teams about customer data.

We anticipate many more CRMs following suit in the next few years of the 2020s with voice assistant usage and supporting hardware in operational processes and interfaces.

7. Businesses are automating more processes using their CRM

To stay relevant to tech-savvy customers, top CRMs need to offer advanced automation features.

Many of the top players have been investing heavily in automation in the last few years; including HubSpotSalesforce and ActiveCampaign, which have placed automation front-and-center in their product and marketing.

In 2021, we predict CRM will become more synonymous with automation. For instance, using chatbots to communicate with customers and solve help tickets automatically, or using automated email workflows to nurture sales prospects down the funnel.

With automation, businesses can offer high-quality customer services while optimizing operational costs – something that an increasing number of businesses are realizing, and CRMs are continuing to support in new ways.

8. One of the top advantages of CRM? A high-def view of customers

Choosing a strong CRM and filling it with reliable data that’s enriched by other apps is the easiest way for a company to build a comprehensive view of its customers.

According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales Report 2020, top-performing salespeople have a higher confidence level in their CRM data than their counterparts. Of the top group, 53% are very confident, and of the non-top only 32% are very confident.

This shows a direct link between sales performance and high-quality data, which comes from putting in the time to maintain data cleanliness and integrity.

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9. CRM is becoming interwoven with IoT technologies

From smart home devices to wearable health monitors and cybersecurity scanners, there are expected to be more than 64 billion IoT devices worldwide by 2025, says TechJury.

This also applies to the corporate world: 93% of enterprises are believed to have adopted IoT technology in 2019, according to Fierce Electronics, which will only continue in coming years. This ranges from simple IoT devices, such as energy meters and smart appliances, to more advanced solutions for greater cost efficiencies, organizational capabilities and supply chain visibility.

Improving customer experience is the area where most enterprises are using data generated from IoT solutions. With IoT technologies, companies can monitor and service their clients in new and proactive ways that were previously unimaginable.

10. CRM: not just for customer-facing teams

CRMs have been traditionally thought of as tools for sales and customer success teams. Times have changed – and CRMs are now a crucial part of a company’s wider tech stack. In 2021, more organizations will realize that CRM benefits everything.

Marketers can use CRMs to best understand the contacts in their pipeline and monitor how CTAs convert. Customer success teams can access a 360-degree view of the customer to provide the most personalized experience. And management can access valuable data on performance across the board.

11. CRMs keep getting more sophisticated

The most requested CRM features are basics like contact management (94%), interaction tracking (88%) and schedule/reminder creation (85%). About a quarter of buyers want monitoring of the sales pipeline and funnel.

However, a fifth of CRM users want slightly more advanced functions: sales automation, a central database, email marketing, customization and reporting/analytics.

Mike Richardson, managing director at Maximizer Software, shared with MyCustomer the importance of balancing sophistication and a centralized view of the customer:

“Best-in-breed systems are rapidly appearing in the market, bringing increasing layers of sophistication and becoming extremely good at solving specialized needs… However, all of these different touchpoints with the customer need to be centralized into a single view of the customer experience, in a system of engagement.”

12. A CRM’s customer experience is as important as its features

According to Salesforce, 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. There are several ways to use CRM technology to meet the expectations of today’s customer:

  • Live chat for quick support
  • Enriched data to show the full customer journey and previous support tickets
  • Accessible customer data across departments
  • Automated knowledge bases
  • Syncing customer data between apps to show a 360-degree view everywhere

As more organizations up their customer experience game, others must follow suit: 73% of customers say one extraordinary experience raises their expectations of other companies.

13. Consumers expect companies to know more about them

A business-to-customer relationship is becoming increasingly like any other human relationship. A company needs to remember previous conversations with a customer, understand their needs and expectations, and adjust communication accordingly. To enable this, all required customer data must be quickly accessible and accurate.

This isn’t always guaranteed: 87% of consumers believe companies need to provide a more consistent customer experience, says Zendesk.

Having a CRM as part of a connected tech stack is the best way to fix this, as it allows different team members to store customer data about all previous conversations and known preferences.

14. CRM growth will come from new markets

Over 50% of CRM buyers in 2019 were in one of four markets: real estate, consulting, distribution and insurance. As we head further into the 2020s, a great deal of new CRM growth will come from other vertical markets. These include:

  • Healthcare
  • Finance
  • Insurance
  • Manufacturing

15. Younger generations are pushing for CRM use

28% of millennials think CRM applications are “extremely critical” to their success, compared to 18% of Generation X and 9% of Baby Boomers.

This CRM trend will grow as millennials and Gen Z continue to gain buying power and the next generations enter the workplace. In the decade ahead, more teams will become tech-centric and insist on maximizing performance through intelligent CRM technology.

16. A company of one is big enough for a CRM

How large does your business need to be to have a CRM? The answer for 2021 is: a company with one employee is big enough.

If you’re managing contact details, juggling a busy pipeline and have customer data to keep track of, you can benefit from using a CRM. These are familiar pain points for freelancers.

Freelancers are providing a strong market segment for CRM platforms, and freelancer tools like Bonsai have already invested in built-in client management features.

17. Self-service via CRM

As automation becomes more synonymous with CRM (see #7), bots are completing more contact management tasks and saving team members from having to lift a finger.

Chatbots offered by platforms like Drift and HubSpot automatically guide prospects through marketing and sales pipelines – collecting data, asking questions and delivering more personalized content.

With self-service, customers get their questions answered faster with far less effort required from the provider. It’s a win-win.

18. Analytics features need to be a CRM’s strength

With sophisticated analytics at their fingertips, organizations are in the best position to identify problems, solutions and opportunities. Companies recognize this – and are increasingly looking for powerful analytics tools to process and report on their data in real time.

CRMs must offer advanced analytics too. Organizations want the most accurate data into how their sales pipeline is performing, how happy customers are and what’s contributing to churn, for example.

Although not all organizations are ready for sophisticated stand-alone analytics platforms just yet, more SMEs are viewing CRM analytics as a must-have, not a nice-to-have.

19. XaaS – everything as a service

SaaS – software as a service – is well-known, but what’s XaaS? Everything as a Service takes the concept of SaaS and spreads it to encompass every form of product and service.

With XaaS, any IT function can be transformed into a service for enterprise consumption – from platform as a service (PaaS) to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) among many others. XaaS includes any computing service delivered via the internet and paid for via a subscription rather than an upfront cost.

As a tech trend for 2021, we predict more organizations will seek cloud solutions for new corners of their business, whether as part of their CRM, a stand-alone system or a connected tool.

20. CRMs need to be connected to every other part of a business

As each year rolls by, more organizations are viewing their CRM as an essential organ for the wellbeing of their company. To make this happen and reap the benefits, a CRM has to be connected to all other tools and processes in your organization.

From your email marketing tool to your invoicing system, make sure to have two-way syncs set up between tools that store customer data and your CRM.

Keeping your data in sync is the best way to avoid human error, resolve pesky data silos, save time on manual input and paint the clearest picture of your business for every team.

In the 2020s, you should have no reason to distrust your customer data and wrestle with unending lists of duplicate emails and misleading data.


To benefit from the CRM trends for 2021, make sure your data is connected

If we have to make one overall prediction for tech and CRM in 2021, it’s that more businesses will be using technology to eradicate or automate what they don’t want to deal with – while getting better results from the tasks they focus on.

The recipe for that is a strong CRM, automated workflows where possible, and a connected app stack where data moves freely between your apps.

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