marketing tools for business strategy

There are a number of different trends emerging in marketing, and those involved in the craft should be aware not only of these changes but the implications of them as well. The first is video. Social media in particular has become a forum for video in marketing. This not only means things like Facebook Live and YouTube, but more sophisticated marketing such as Wistia's pro plans, Vidyard, and Brightcove. Video is another means by which a company can tell its brand story, and there is evidence that the use of video in marketing is not just on the rise but is effective as well, because most audiences find that video content is more engaging than other forms of content (Sharma, 2017).

Artificial intelligence is a big one, and that includes the use of smarter chatbots. These will pop-up on screen to help pull visitors to a website into the marketing funnel more quickly, and they have proven to be quite effective (Grennan, 2017). Chatbots also provide an opportunity for the brand to tailor its experience, setting up a number of different scripts to help move prospects through the funnel more quickly. These are going to be increasingly incorporated into apps in the coming years, as well as into websites.

These trends build on the ongoing shift towards content marketing, and the use of SaaS tools to support marketing initiatives. These tools allow companies to coordinate their efforts among web pages, blogs, social media and email campaigns more easily, and track response rates more effectively as well. Add features like lead scoring, and a lot of the work that used to be done manually in marketing departments, including high-level coordination between different approaches, is now nearly entirely automated, and can be executed from anywhere over the Internet.

These trends relate to a shift between the ways that companies interact with their external environments, and in particular how they engage with leads, prospects and the public at large. The external environment by way of these changes is reshaping how companies approach marketing, especially where small and medium sized businesses are concerned. Such entities now have access to enterprise-level technologies at a fraction of the price, and that is allowing smaller companies to be more nimble in terms of their marketing efforts. The reality is that these external environmental changes are a fantastic opportunity for progressive companies that can move quickly, but they will also leave other companies behind.

The issue of social change is a bit trickier. There is some evidence to support the idea that millennials respond differently to social media and electronic communications in general, so marketers are enjoying some luck in targeting millennials with these approaches. But that makes these approaches popular and means that all companies are going to see more of this -- but in a sense because these approaches allow for a more humanized approach to marketing -- experiences tailored for individuals, which is quite different that how high-level marketing approaches have worked in the past.

I do believe that it is critical for leaders to understand the external environment of their business. Leadership controls resources -- human resources, budgets -- that are needed to put the business in a position to respond to changes in the environment. As an example, the trend towards more video in marketing is a reality. But if the people at the top of the company are unaware, they might be skeptical about setting the budget to hire a videographer and the right hosting software. The result is that the company lags behind because the right resources weren't in place to get ahead of the competition on the adoption of new technology. Further, when the shift involves things like the customer base -- if the personas start to change, for example -- the company won't be responsive, it will miss great new potential opportunities, and ultimately there will be friction between the people who are aware of the external environment and leaders who are not that could cause the company to bleed quality marketers.

There is no doubt that modern marketing tools will help managers to enhance business strategy. The key is the analytical power of tools, which is quite a bit better than it used to be. Using the video example, suppose you get a professional video team together, get the top Vidyard plan, and then integrate that with something like Hubspot or Salesforce. Then stick a chatbot onto your website and some smart content directly into the video. That's a company that will not only get more people into the funnel, but will learn more about them. The value there isn't just lead generation, it's learning more about those leads. You can learn more about your existing personas, and identify trends where the customer base maybe is changing. All of this leads to a much more data-driven approach to business strategy, because the organization not only has the ability to put together amazing content that drives eyeballs and holds them, but then the company is equipped to pull people into the funnel right away, and start the qualification process. That's much more powerful than a company with a static website and a Contact Us page as the main way to pull people into the funnel, an old-school approach that isn't great at capturing leads or learning anything about them.

In terms of social change, that's an entirely different matter from business strategy, really. The objective of these marketing tools is not to affect social change, unless that's your business; they are marketing tools to be used for marketing. But if you want to promote social change, it's kind of the same as any other marketing -- you need eyeballs and to build relationships in order to more effectively promote your message. So while this doesn't have much to do with business strategy, the same tools can be used to perform much the same tasks.

References

Grennan, T. (2017). 5 emerging trends marketers should watch in 2017. Appology. Retrieved April 23, 2017 from https://www.appboy.com/blog/5-emerging-trends-marketers-watch-2017/

Sharma, A. (2017). Top emerging marketing trends you can't avoid in 2017. Measure Marketing. Retrieved April 23, 2017 from http://measuremarketing.net/top-emerging-marketing-trends-you-cant-avoid-in-2017/