Digital marketing spoils brands with multiple choices

With the plethora of brands out there, a consumer has many choices and limited loyalty in this fast growing and ever evolving digital world

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With the dawn of digital marketing and social media platforms, consumers and brands alike are constantly evolving and looking for newer ways to interact with one another. Selfie sticks, GoPro, Oculus VR, Apple Watch, Augmented Reality and many other gadgets mark the evolution of digital media and the introduction of innovative marketing campaigns by brands. With these technological innovations, consumers are getting lured into engaging constantly and being amazed by how brands communicate with them. This evolution will only increase with the growing pace of innovation. Today, from a brand’s perspective, there are innumerable ways to market and reach out to your customers.

The digital consumer is aware, always looking for something new and knows how to use technology to his/her advantage. Potential consumers are being lured in and retained through innovative campaigns, leveraged through social media and mobile. Being cost-effective, reaching out to millions at once and being able to engage in a sustained manner makes social media and mobile marketing a starting point of many marketing plans today. Social media gives brands the ability to leverage big and small campaigns, letting content take the front seat. With this, brands have started leveraging fun and quirky days that resonate with their brand. Chocolate Day, World Hug Day, etc are now important and popular days in a brand manager’s marketing calendar. Content on social media is being led through visuals and an increasingly large population has turned to video content consumption across the globe as well. So how does one differentiate from another? While insights have played an important role in helping brands understand what works and doesn’t for their brand and how their consumers react to social media, brands have understood that they need to find innovative means to grab eyeballs and amaze the consumer.

Gadgets such as drones, GoPro, Oculus VR have allowed brands to start creating strategies which include the integration of such technology into their marketing plan. For instance, Marriott International launched a new product called “VRoom Service” where customers staying at hotels around the world can order virtual experiences to their rooms via VR. Another such example is Bacardi India NH7 weekender, which had a drone to capture all the happy faces present at the concert. These campaigns came with one simple insight of understanding what the brand’s target audience wants and what would get them talking.

In the era of smartphones, people have access to a plethora of options for all kinds of information at their disposal. To think of the numerous ways one can get in touch with a consumer is beyond our imagination! Applications on a smartphone are making a human’s life a whole lot easier and more efficient. People no longer use newspapers to check the latest news, they simply sign into Twitter from a smartphone to check out the breaking news across the globe or download an application that sends out information constantly to them. Upgradation of telecom services, Wi-Fi hotspots at every nook and corner are just some of the main reasons for this dependency on mobile by brands, for their marketing. With instant messaging apps being the primary form of conversation for audiences today, WhatsApp, Line, Hike, Viber are creating solutions for brands to engage with their audiences without taking them away from where they love to spend their time. Mobile is the future and we must not ignore its vast potential.

With digital marketing coming into the limelight, brands do have more options to showcase their products and services, but once you look closely, you realise that a brand’s message is sometimes marred by confusion of choosing the right tool or platform that would be best to reach out to their customer. And with the plethora of brands out there, a consumer has many choices and limited loyalty in this fast growing and ever evolving digital world.

So, with these challenges, how do you fulfil the needs of a consumer and be that brand that they would prefer or choose over others? Simple, you grant as many wishes as you can, be visible on every single platform you think your consumers visits on a daily basis, run engaging campaigns or offers that will attract them, speak in the tone of the consumer and invest in ideas that speak innovation, to drive higher brand recall and outreach.

Squeeze out every bit of that budget to reach out to them through all the dynamic digital technology coming up and never let them forget you, even for a single day, because you can do that with social media and mobile on your side. So, go out there and make your online presence felt, by making use of all the dynamic digital technology at your disposal.

- By Randal Gomes, Creative Lead, MindShift Interactive

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.