The Future of Digital Marketing and the Rise of Digital Operations

Of every £5 spent on retail purchases last year in the UK, £1 was spent online? That’s a fifth of everything purchased being bought online.

If you do not want to be left behind or indeed become a leader in this new marketplace then you need to consider how you market your business online.

With that in mind, we’re going to identify some current trends that we believe will impact digital marketing extensively over the next five years as well as start to consider Digital Operations, or Disruptive Tech.

First some good news: many of your competitors will not be serious competition – they’re just not adapting fast enough.

What do I mean by that? Well in the USA, for example, 37% of companies have no plans to digitally “transform” their marketing, which is even more surprising when you discover that only 6% (that’s fewer than one in sixteen) think their current digital and traditional marketing are integrated successfully. Despite that, virtually half of your competitors (49% of the companies surveyed) lack a “defined” strategy they want to pursue.

We’ve yet to see stats on the rise of Digital Operatons or Disruptive Tech but they’re happening now. For example, Uber, AirBnB, JustEat, Google for Jobs and contactless payment (aka cashless environments) are all examples of Disruptive Tech.

If I tell you that the best routes to digital marketing success will remain search engine optimization (Search Ranking and Map Pack Ranking), content marketing, and email marketing, then I’m not out of step with most predictions. Here’s where I predict things a little less mainstream.

• Effective marketing strategies will involve more video content: 64% of consumers say video on social media has motivated them to make a  purchase.
   
• Leading the digital transformation will be omni-channel marketing: The Internet-of-things, software-as-a-service, and other digital tools are encroaching into more and more people’s day-to-day lifestyles. Tap into this trend for automation and adopt novel technologies to make marketing easy to manage.
   
• Martech (Marketing Tech) and OperTech (Operational Tech) needs to unite these channels: Consider tools that will integrate social media, CRM, Sales analysis channels as well as using the web to take on heavy lifting Operational tasks.
   
• Experiential marketing will dominate: The switch to mobile has shown the power of built-in interaction. With the giants of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, all integrating business tools into their platforms it won’t be long before social media becomes more than just a means to distribute content.
   
• Integration will dominate interaction with customers: projecting forward it’s evident that brands will integrate their diverse channels to improve the overall consumer experience. Think of ways to integrate your message across channels: motivating Facebook users to check their emails for new content, for example. Or the rise of Google’s Knowledge Graph and it’s integration into not only various Mapping platforms but also Sat Navs and combinations of all these like Waze.
   
• Eliminate disruption and improve engagement: Using new tools that allow you to assess consumer behaviour you need to spot “patterns” and adjust anything that interrupts your consumer’s journey.

• Customise: the personalised nature of social media will exert a growing influence over consumers and the best brands will focus on customisation and personalisation. What customisation opportunities can you offer? What can make your offering unique?