Marketing buzzwords come and go but ‘innovation’, it seems, is here to duration. In a competitive landscape, businesses are putting more pressure than ever on their marketing departments to conceive innovative campaigns that make their brands stand out and drive true engagement with consumers.
The truth is that digital marketing is a dynamic discipline that is currently in a period of exponential growth, and professionals are finding it difficult to keep abreast of new and emerging trends. In fact, a whopping 76% of marketers admit they are struggling because their profession has changed more in the past two years than it has in the past fifty.
As a result, marketers are feeling overwhelmed by the arsenal of technologies at their disposal. Which in turn leads to difficult decisions as with so many vendors offering creative marketing solutions, how can they discern which tools will add real value to their activities and deliver a strong ROI, whilst simultaneously positioning their brand as ‘innovative’?
Augmented reality (AR) is an excellent case in point. The technology has been around for a number of years now and is showing no signs of slowing down – despite originally being met with cynicism by marketers. Sure, the technology looks impressive and has that initial ‘wow’ factor, but what can it really offer to my business? How will it create engaging dialogues between my brand and consumers, other than differentiating it as a little quirky? These are questions that marketers have and are continuing to ask themselves about this smartphone technology.
Looking at augmented reality today however, shows that AR is by no means a flash in the pan. Larger than life FMCG brands such as Coca Cola and Cadbury’s have had huge successes with AR – take the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, which let drinkers create and personalise their own virtual can and share with friends and family. If this crossover from physical into digital is good enough for marketing titans like Coca Cola, then it’s surely a sign that AR can help businesses across the globe and in different sectors to execute campaigns that are more creative and engaging.
As with any emerging technology, there are always obstacles that will need to be overcome. ‘Innovation’ is often costly and difficult to measure, so marketers remain wary of making bold statements and big investments which will inevitably need to be justified to the board. Yet the need to drive innovation remains. How to best harness technologies like augmented reality, and use them to create sustainable business goals?
The keylies in careful execution and research. Gone are the days of rudimentary, top of the line marketing plans – we live in a world of big data, where expenditure is not only carefully measured but forecasted and aligned with business KPIs with great accuracy.
Decisions should not be taken lightly when it comes to innovation. The best digital marketers are taking a proactive interest in the world around them; they know who is doing what, and how different techniques are being received by consumers. Inquisitiveness is crucial here. There is a sea of fascinating start-ups in the marketing technology space, and exploring them all is sadly not an option – but there will inevitably be several that catch a marketer’s eye, and it is important that they act quickly when this happens. Marketers have to be unafraid of asking questions and learning what they can about a potential technology partner. If they don’t have these conversations, they can’t find out what they need to know, which ultimately comes down to three things:
· How will this technology improve my marketing activities?
· How can I apply sustainable and meaningful KPIs to an innovative campaign?
· How do I sell this to the C-suite?
It is OK for marketers not to hold the answers to all of these questions. Rather, it is the job of technology start-ups and entrepreneurs to answer these business questions for them in the products that they are creating; failing to do so will mean failure to permeate the modern market.
Marketers may be feeling unsettled at the moment, but in truth this shift in the dynamic of the market is presenting an exciting opportunity for them to learn about new technologies that are changing the way that we interact with the world around us every day. The only thing they need worry about is how to spot the diamonds in the rough, and how they can create meaningful relationships with technology suppliers that will reinvent their marketing strategies for the better.
By Caspar Thykier, CEO of Zappar.
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