Marketing is a key aspect of any given business. It not only showcases your product or service in the target market to put your prospective customers in the know of your offering, it also helps survive in highly competitive markets which constantly witness change in trends. That's why marketing strategy also requires change.
Often times it is the marketing strategy which is known to have changed the market trends. It can't achieve such results unless it keeps one eye on present and the other on future. The marketing tribe is utterly down-to-earth. They are all the time focused on consumer psychology. Therefore, they never lag behind in finding out innovative ways to attract more customers to use their products or services.
Here are some emerging marketing trends which are going to rule the future of marketing.
#1. MAKING USE OF THE STATE-OF-THE ART GADGETS THAT HAVE CHANGED LIFE AND CONSUMER HABITS
This is absolutely important. Life is made increasingly easy and, at the same time, efficient by state-of-the-art gadgets. One of these is, undoubtedly, mobile devices (such as mobiles, smart phones, tablets, etc) of which utility is astoundingly diversified by a burst of applications. The apps of Flipkart, Amazon, etc provide a good case in point.
The whole world is moving fast and whatever is to be done is to be done on the go. That's what people are doing. Their attention span is very small and nothing that fails to interest them at first sight is sure to fail in commanding their affection. Here's where mobile devices come in for good.
Just imagine how many mobile alerts you receive on hourly basis! And how many of them are promotional! These promotions bring you vis-à-vis an infinite variety of choice of consumer goods and services. Therefore, the whole world has gone mobile! Know the potential of your mobile device. That's the point.
#2. BUILDING RELATIONSHIP WITH CUSTOMERS
'Customer is the king' has been a dominating marketing mantra since quite sometime now. But each and every person is a prospective consumer and each person is different from the other, and so he/she has his/her own criteria in making choice of what is to be consumed. Marketing does offer them a number of options to choose from. But the known tendency of customers is to try out different options until they find out what suits them most. And when they find this out, they stick to it. In other words, they become loyal to the brand that wins them.
The market research, therefore, is the place where it all begins. It's based on the market research that products or services are designed. The final phase of the marketing labor is to advertise them to the target markets. All activities on the part of a business end here. From this point onwards, all eyes are on the customers. If they pass a product or service, the foundation of the relationship between a brand and its customers is laid. Businesses need must build on it by upgrading their product or service. If they won't do this, their competitors surely will to make deep inroads into their hard-won market. That's why businesses are always keen to know what their customers have to say about their offerings.
#3. USER GENERATED AND FRESH CONTENT (UGC)
The mushrooming e-commerce businesses all over world bring to our attention a new marketing phenomenon called user generated content (UGC). This is called online customer reviews. Similar content is found on so many social media out there, in pictures, videos, and also in blogs and guest posts, whether it is a corporate blog or a blog of some small business.
According to Facebook white paper statistics, every day 350 million photos are uploaded on Facebook, more than 500 tweets are registered on Twitter, and around 12 million videos are shared on Vine. So much more must be transpiring on other social networking sites is only a matter of conjecture. The reason these are proving extremely effective is that they are there to show to the consumers that the concerned product or service is tried and not found wanting in any respect. Consumers' views hold more authenticity for consumers than advertisements.
This gives fair indication of how brands and consumers are moving closer to mutually create a viable marketing strategy for mutual benefit. Very often customers also get reward for promoting a brand through his feedback. That is what was meant by mutual benefit. This tactic is extremely valuable to build up a society of loyal or returning customers.
#4. EFFECTIVE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Apart from what the users generate, the social media tools also help businesses do their own bit with their help. If marketing is done effectively on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, it has the potential to generate revenue there and then.
Take, for instance, a new and extremely exhilarating feature that Facebook has come up with. It's about boosting money transfer free-of-charge! Now consumers can save their credit card details on Facebook, which allows them to access as many as 450,000 e-commerce businesses out there. If they find something that interests them, they can buy it right there.
Especially interesting from customers' point-of-view is the 'free-of-charge' tag attached to this system. If they do money transfer here, they don't incur processing fees. Other money transfer means do entail processing charges. This is going to make big difference for the businesses in the time to come - the 'Buy' button coming up on Facebook and Twitter.
#5. BRAND EARNS THE CUSTOMERS
No matter how vehemently you market your goods, if they are not worth the marketing campaign, they are not going to last. There are other competitors in the market who are going to overtake your product or service. Ultimately, quality will speak for itself when customers will use your product.
So, you will never be able to place your product in the minds of the customers until and unless the product proves really good when they use it. It builds credit for your business. That's how Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc are the brands which will constantly beg respect from their worldwide clientele. Their research labs are working all the time to innovate their products and services.
CONCLUSION
From the brief discussion above, of the viable strategies which are going to work in the time to come, we can clearly see that marketing is not a way to foist things on simple customers but rather an exercise directed to find ways to reach prospective customers and convince them about the utility of your product/service, effectively showcase your offerings, keep the target market well-informed about what is special about their offerings that sells, sustain a loyal clientele as well as increase it through serving their interests in ways discussed above.
Here, it must be acknowledged that this discussion is not comprehensive. There ARE other marketing strategies as well but they are beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, the strategies discussed here are broadly in use now and on which future strategies are going to be based.
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