Innovations in technology have continuously changed the marketing industry throughout history, and will continue to do so in the future. New forms of media are being created that have caused the industry to construct new tools and strategies to help brands refocus their marketing mix. In this post, I will be discussing the way video streaming, mobile, and social media are changing the way we market.
Video Streaming
Online video has been majorly influenced by websites like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube. The arrival of these platforms sparked a major change in the industry as people began looking to the web for entertainment. This led advertisers to redirect their dollars to take advantage of this advance in online video. Millennials, the largest demographic in our country, are telling us they regularly stream content versus watching it on TV. With websites like Netflix, customers are able to watch hours of content and never see a single ad, whereas YouTube has become another online venue for measurable and targeted advertising in the form of attached text and pre-roll ads.
Mobile
Nowadays, everything online is designed to be available on a mobile platform. If you haven’t updated your website to become mobile-friendly, you’re late to the game. In 2013, mobile overtook PC as the main way people access the internet throughout the world. More consumers are using their phone or tablet to access the internet, shop online, and visit websites. They expect websites to load quickly and be simple to navigate from a mobile platform. While the internet can tell advertisers what sites consumers visit and for how long, mobile can give them a detailed picture of their customers everyday lives.
Social
People trust the opinions of their friends and family more than they trust a message from a brand, that’s why word-of-mouth is one of the most influential forms of advertising. Word-of-mouth can heavily affect a brand and social media has intensified that effect. Social media brought the conversations that consumers were having to an online platform, giving marketers the chance to monitor and contribute to them in real-time. The shift from one-way communication with traditional media to two-way communication with social media sometimes makes a brand’s consumers their best advertisers.