Trends shaping the future of Digital Marketing
Marketing has experienced an unforeseen digital acceleration accompanied by a radical change in consumer trends, the rise of new marketing platforms and business structures. Companies have had to adapt to a new scenario, where disruptive technology has emerged to help marketing scale sustainably and cost-efficiently.
Which are the main trends shaping the future of digital marketing? Keep on reading to learn about the habits adopted during the pandemic that will stay with us.
1. Fourth dimension brand experiences (4DBX)
When the pandemic is over, events will probably stay virtual not only because of safety reasons but also due to ROI and the opportunity to engage with entirely new audiences, in a more accessible way. However, we will evolve into formats that we had not experienced so far.
Thanks to technology, traditional marketing has shifted towards the world of immersive, digital, and virtual experiences. Physical spaces have been disrupted and digital twins have become a reality. Phygital spaces have emerged from the combination of the physical and the digital worlds. They have come together with network devices that guarantee seamless and continuous exchange through cloud-based connections.
“We are shifting towards an experiential sensory brand experiences that will count with our five senses, and where people will be able to become part of the story, “ Fernando Lázaro, CMO NTT Disruption & Head of Growthland.
This new wave of content creation, where cutting-edge technologies for audiovisual production like VFX, CGI, and where animation intervene, have introduced a new paradigm of real-time AR stagers and live streaming.
There are a few outstanding examples that show these fourth dimension brand experiences are already a reality. For example Travis Scott’s and Fortnite’s live event -that gathered a live music event within a video game with a 12 million record participation-, The Drew Barrymore’s Show -that brought guests from across the country into CBS Broadcast Studio in New York- Chats For Good by Growthland -that leveraged on the latest exponential technologies in the areas of virtual production, cloud and digital- or Nike’s By You, a collection opened to hyper-personalization.
4DBX by Growthland is an enabler for the new era of digital worlds, to reach a new fourth dimension of experiences for brands. It offers new and unprecedented formats with the most advanced technologies for the creation of Virtual Films, Virtual Events, and Virtual Venues. In other words, what the marketing industry has baptized as ‘metaverses’.
2. Data Driven Inspiration
The pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation and has exponentially increased the number of people who use the Internet daily. There is a global network of wiser publics that access digital media with distinct purposes and habits (and new disruptive devices). To reach these new and diverse publics, marketers need to rely on data as never before, turning to ‘Consumer Empathy’ -the ability to understand the underlying needs and feelings of customers, and viewing things from their perspective- into the future differentiator among companies.
‘Consumer empathy’ will be the future differentiator among companies, to exceed consumer expectations and evolve from the era of personalization.
Understanding digital consumers is key. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have become great allies to obtain Smart Digital Insights about digital contents and consumers. In fact, the complete sales funnel is based on the permanent consumer data. These tech realms -such as AI and ML- can analyze digital content and understand what works best, for whom and why. This helps collect, discover, and curate brands’ valuable contents using digital data intelligence, which results in more information, and influences better marketing and content decisions.
Using data in marketing automation can give a detailed picture of potential consumer behaviors, thanks to behavioral analysis methods such as following users’ paths and designing consumer journeys accordingly, for any of the stages of the digital funnel, for example.
3. Content Automation
According to Datareportal, 53,6% of the global total population are active social media users, a figure that has grown by 490 million over the last year. Hootsuite estimates that we spend about 7 hours a day online and about 2,5 hours on social media.
Covid-19 has made people more active online than ever before, pushing brand and marketers to create content with greater frequency. To keep up with demand, brands and agencies are strengthening their tech stack with Smart Scalable Content Platforms, powered by data-driven insights, to generate high-quality content faster, in a cost-efficient way, and, optimized for their audience.
“Marketing automation is about speed and scalability. It’s about the shift from intuition to certainty to provide personalized experiences, faster and in more cost-efficient ways. The secret relies in the balance between human creativity, machine efficiency and data usage. Thanks to these, we can assure sustainable growth,” assures Miguel Martínez Lozano, Chief Product Officer of Growthland.
Thanks to Data Driven Insights, creative talent can find inspiration and sources around brand’s territories and classify topics in terms of relevance and exclusivity. This way, creative work is done faster.
Moreover, Smart Scalable Content Platforms also count with automated production and distribution. This helps make the most out of tech and talent, and generates adaptations to all formats and digital channels, for 360º campaigns.
The pandemic has changed the way we live, work, and do marketing. We will continue to experience live events that combine our five senses in multiple dimensions; we will use data to provide better insights to generate disruptive creative contents faster and efficiently, where technology will help marketing grow sustainably through immersive experiences, data insights, and content automation for all audiences and formats. Marketing has entered a new era where tech and creativity are combined to unleash new unprecedented experiences.
Sources
Datareportal, 2021: “Digital 2021: Global Overview Report”. Available online
Adobe, 2021: “2021 Digital Trends predicts a post-pandemic future”. Available online
DeVries, H., 2021: “Seven Digital Marketing Trends For 2021”. Available online
FT, 2021: “Digital ad market set to eclipse traditional media for first time”. Available online
Obrien, H., 2020: “10 Future Digital Marketing Trends for 2021”. Available online
Datareportal, 2021: “Digital 2021: Loval country headlines”. Available online
Hubspot, 2021: “Not Another State of Marketing Report — Web Version”. Available online
Barricelli, B., Casiraghi, E., Fogli, D., 2019: “A Survey on Digital Twin: Definitions, Characteristics, Applications, and Design Implications”. Available online
