How should you be thinking about ways that you’re going to need to shift your marketing efforts when it comes to digital advertising, when it comes to your communication and outreach, over the next several years?
Introduction (00:00-00:53)
Topic (00:53): The Future of Digital Advertising
Projection 1 (1:15): Digital advertising (and the cost of it) is going to rise over the next few years.
You’ll want to put yourself or your company in position where you’ve already grown a decent following, or you already have a handle on what ads are gonna be effective for you. As more companies come in and continue to flood the marketplace, build out Facebook pages and business accounts, et cetera, we can probably expect that the cost is going to increase on things like Facebook advertising and Google advertising.
What To Do NOW (1:55): Start thinking long-term.
Be planning over the next two to three years. Though if you’re already on the leading edge of innovation for your industry, maybe the next two or three months!
Projection 2 (2:45): Artificial intelligence will have an increased impact on digital advertising and how you communicate with your audience.
Chances are, you’ve probably interacted with a chatbot before, which is a type of artificial intelligence tool. You just might not realize what that interaction is! If you’ve ever been on a website and a chat window pops up and it says, “Would you like to speak to someone on our team?” That’s a great example of how AI will seamlessly integrate into audience-communication and backend tools for marketers.
What To Do NOW (4:01): Integrate chatbots so that your audience feels a smoother roll out of other AI advancements later.
The best example of chatbot integration is Domino’s Pizza, the famous pizza chain across the US. The cool thing about the advertising side is when Domino’s launched the feature to allow you to go on their Facebook page and use their chatbot technology to order a pizza, without having to pick up the phone and call, is they launched a huge ad campaign around it. That ad campaign didn’t just occur through digital or social networks, it occurred on a massive scale. They ran TV ads, they ran print ads, and again, on the digital side, ran some Facebook ads to start generating the demand there as well.
They were thinking ahead and thinking about how can they can take advantage of AI, integrate it to create a more personalized experience with their customers, and then roll it out through a social media network. And that’s how you go about planning your digital advertising incorporating something new and cutting edge that maybe competitors aren’t doing.
Projection 3 (5:46): SEO is about to get multimedia optimized.
What’s about to get interesting with digital advertising is that, while so many devices have features currently focused on audio, we may progress to focusing visual. The way that ads can transfer from device to device as we move around our increasingly digital world, strategize for media that is voice-only, media more traditionally text-only, media of different sizes of visuals like stills or GIFs or video.
What To Do NOW (7:14): Put Voice SEO on your radar.
Voice SEO is the optimization for when a user speaks into a device instead of using a search engine. 40% of adults are using voice search. That’s not a small number. So, as a marketer, what you’ve got to start thinking about is the organic side of SEO and voice search that’s going to cause your website and ads to rank well in search engines—written and spoken.
Projection 4 (8:34): Advertising using virtual reality.
The crumbs have already started. The New York Times did a VR campaign with documentary films and used the Google Cardboard glasses to promote them. Even things like the Pokémon Go game or when ESPN did live statistical graphics for the NBA – all are different versions of virtual reality that advertising can take a hold of.
Pro Tip (9:15): The three main types of virtual reality are:
- Virtual reality, which places a user inside the digital reality.
This is exciting for businesses that offer an experience.
- Augmented reality, which places digital content into our reality.
This would be good for types of products, putting that object into the customer’s desired environment.
- Mixed reality, which is when digital content and live content are interacting.
This could layer reality to show your product or service in the way that a customer might use it themselves.
What To Do NOW (11:12): You don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in your budget to get innovative and creative.
While this might not be something your team can whip up within the next 30 days, but within the next 12 months, you can come up with a way to tease this out to your audience to get them more engaged. And if you have a group of loyal fans, they will probably love it!
Final Thoughts (11:55)
The future is always right around the corner! This is just a peek at all the ideas floating around out there that you could start brainstorming about. Because if you aren’t the first to do it, someone else will be there.
Closing (12:28)
Stay tuned for more topics coming up soon. But if you’re sparking some ideas, make sure to tweet us, message us on Instagram, or hit us up on Facebook. Find us on any of those channels @gogettergroup or @sonjacrystal, and tell us what you’re thinking. We’d love to get your thoughts as well as your questions, and talk to you more for our next podcast!
Want more tips for the future of your marketing strategy? Check out our “Preparing Your Digital Marketing for 2022” Instagram Live Q&A with Sonja and Lenaya here on our YouTube!