It was just a few decades ago that many companies relied on word of mouth for the success of their organization. Although TV and print ads were an option, these venues were fiscally out of reach for many businesses.
The proliferation of the Internet, online marketing and the IoT has created a massive opportunity for businesses of all sizes to up their marketing strategy and reach audiences they never thought possible just a few short years ago. The corner store can sell to the four corners of the earth, and local business can become internationally known. With such a rapid increase in technology, however, experts are finding that many organizations are far underutilizing the power of technology to help them to grow their business.
How Technology Powers Marketing Strategy
The two most critical goals for a business strategically employing technology are increasing sales revenue and gaining competitive advantage. Technology is greatly assisting in these goals in many ways, with some of the most meaningful outlined here.
- Creating a Dynamic Customer Experience: With each passing day, the online customer experience is becoming more and more critical to business success. As millennials continue to dominate the purchasing market in major sectors, companies are realizing that their outreach to this powerful demographic needs to be engaging, participatory, and interactive. Utilizing data gathered and collected through the Internet of Things, companies can target specific customers who have an immediate need for their product, and make the purchase fun and easy. Instant feedback, targeted deals, and easy, repeatable purchases are all changing the way companies draw and keep customers.
- Communicating a More Comprehensive Message: With the relative low-cost of online marketing and social media advertising, companies are no longer relegated to a single ad or truncated message. As consumers are increasingly not only concerned with the quality of the product, but with the values which a company represents, organizations have a powerful tool in technology. They can relate their message, link purchases, and social justice efforts, and reach out to those who would be most likely to identify with their mission.
- Create Ad Campaigns – and Product Lines – Around What Their Clients are Talking About: The smarter the technology gets, the more a marketing strategy can be dynamically developed in real time – based upon client preferences social media conversations, sites they are visiting, articles they are reading, and song genres they love. The wealth of online data is staggering and allows companies to track trends and behaviors down to the individual. This means that a social media user who just read an article on the benefits of drinking clean water can see your ad for a water purifier within minutes; providing the most cost-effective and targeted client demographic than has ever been possible.
The downside to all of this technological capability is that the average business owner can find themselves at a bit of a loss as to how to best capitalize on all the advanced capability. In fact, a 2017 marketing trends study found that while half of the respondents had gotten proficient at social media tools, the majority still struggled with how to integrate powerful email campaigns to their target audiences, and 73% of companies still were challenged in how to integrate their technology capability into account based marketing.
If your corporation is ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level but aren’t sure how, simply call the experts at Alliance IT. Our team can help you to understand the capability you have at your fingertips to increase revenues, spike sales, and grow your reputation, all with tools already at your disposal.
