How Technology Will Change Marketing in the Future

The future of marketing will completely change forever as technology continues to evolve and grow at such a fast-paced rate. If marketers want to stay ahead of the competition, it is pretty likely that they will begin to adopt these new technologies in the future to better sell their products or services to consumers.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality technology is quickly improving, and will soon be able to offer consumers a new, personalized, and immersive way to shop, travel the world, and play their favorite games, all from the comfort of their home. This is a big leap from how we currently do things, such as browsing on Amazon, saving up to splurge on a vacation, or playing live online games as an alternative to a brick and mortar location activity.

For example, marketers will likely take advantage of this technology by creating immersive virtual reality ads that are integrated into other virtual reality experiences. Maybe a gamer will be playing a virtual reality game and it will pause the main game to open a small mini-game that is actually an ad for a product.

Augmented Reality

Another technology that marketers have already started using is augmented reality. Some people may be wondering: What is augmented reality? A great example of it is Pokémon Go, where a person can view reality through their phone camera but an app adds a layer on top of reality so that it looks like there are Pokémon wherever you are.

Marketers have already started using this technology to sell products through creating augmented reality applications that people can use in certain locations. For example, a perfume company may be trying to sell their latest fragrance so they ask their followers to download their app and try it out at a nearby park. When they open the app, they will see the nature and trees of the park with an added layer of giant butterflies and flowers flying around the park that aren’t really there. This is a fun way for marketers to get people to think about their products and have a fun experience tied to the brand.

Big Data

Although social media is fun, it is important to remember that if people are not paying for the platform, they are the product. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are constantly tracking their users and collecting data points about their likes, dislikes, interests, and hobbies.

For example, Facebook collects data on the type of cars their users drive and the magazines they buy. These social media platforms can also use their thousands of data points of their users to predict things such as what bracket their household income falls into and their spending habits.

Social media platforms then sell this big data to marketers so they can better target the people who are most likely to buy their product. People often see an ad or sponsored post pop up on Instagram that’s perfectly targeted towards a person’s specific interest such as diamond jewelry or furry boots. That’s probably because Facebook saw them liking and looking at images with diamonds or furry boots and they sold that information to marketers.

Smart Speakers

Finally, smart speakers such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home are a form of new technology that marketers have started to take advantage of. Brands and marketers have started creating their own “skills” for these smart speakers so they can market their product to customers through their speaker.

For example, a burger brand may create a “skill” so when someone says, “Hey, Alexa, order me my favorite burger,” the speaker will automatically connect to the burger restaurant and order their favorite and have it delivered to them. This is an extremely convenient way to market their product. Instead of having to log onto a website where they have to put their credit card in and order all of the toppings for their burger, a person can just say one sentence to their smart speaker and have it right away.