Here is the latest Digital Matters column in business news. It is written by Lawrence Dick, marketing executive at the Department for Enterprise

The landscape of marketing has arguably changed more in the last five years than in the last 50, and today, with increased mobile connectivity and established digital infrastructure, changes are happening even faster.

Traditional digital marketing methods such as paid media, SEO (search engine optimisation) and social media are experiencing a dramatic shift, and as innovations in technology develop, we too must evolve to stay ahead of the curve (or at least the robots).

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is disrupting digital marketing methods in a myriad of ways. A key example is in paid media, with a little thing called ’programmatic advertising’.

Traditionally we would use paid search as a method of generating more web traffic by buying advertisements on search engines.

We either pay every time our advert is clicked (pay per click or PPC) or when our advert is displayed. This tends to be a labour intensive process, often with dedicated teams deciding what platforms to spend on, based on where they believe the advert will receive the most traction.

Programmatic advertising uses AI to automatically buy advertising space, using data to determine which audience the ads should be targeting.

This automation is much more efficient and fast, meaning higher conversion and lower customer acquisition costs. This advancement is by no means new, and according to eMarketer, 86% of all digital display ads will automated by 2020.

Influencer marketing is today’s answer to word-of-mouth marketing; after all, that croissant isn’t really the best croissant you’ve ever had, until a perfectly filtered instagrammer says it is so. Indeed, it is far more credible for a member of the public to tell the world how great your brand is, rather than you tell them yourself - people trust people.

However, the influencer industry has seen some challenges in recent years as brands struggle to find the right people to promote their image and message.

AI has been working hard to change the landscape of influencer marketing by automating the selection process, matching brands with their perfect ambassador.

Algorithms sift through millions of posts to analyse images, comments and likes to track engagement and determine how well the influencer and brand match.

The AI can also be trained using existing data to predict which incentive works most effectively to encourage an influencer to post, and then proceed to offer this incentive at the right moment.

With the impending removal of visible likes on Instagram, AI-based platforms are already incorporating several other metrics that can be used to measure the effectiveness of a brand’s campaign, including story engagement, follower growth and even video completion and whether audio is on or off. Click-through rates that measure new leads and website traffic continue to be monitored closely.

From humans to bots, more specifically, Chatbots.

According to peer-to-peer review site, G2, Chatbots will power a whopping 85% of customer service by 2020, and by 2022, they will help save businesses over $8billion annually. In an age where we, as humans, are less and less likely to pick up the phone, customers are turning to Chatbots when interacting with brands or businesses, citing 24/7 responses, prompt answers and accurate recalling of buying history as reasons for the shift.

After all, bots don’t need tea, lunch or loo breaks, and they never get frustrated.

Augmented Reality (AR) & Immersive

Technologies

The use of augmented reality in marketing has seen a huge spike recently, with brands turning to technology to enhance customer experience and increase sales. The most notable example is the increase in the number of cosmetic brands using a new AR try-on feature, whereby consumers can upload a picture of themselves to virtually try-on various products to see how they look on theirface.

Just this month, Instagram has enabled the AR feature on certain product pages - with Mac, Nars and Ray-Ban announced as early partners. IKEA have also created their own AR app called IKEA Place which allows you to take picture of a room in your home with your smartphone in order to ’test drive’ IKEA’s furniture in it.

You can move the furniture around and see how it looks from different angles.

Beyond AR, virtual reality continues to make headway in the world of digital marketing, with many brands creating virtual experiences and immersing customers in their world, whether it be a 360 tour of an office, factory or airplane cabin, virtually test driving a new Volvo, or by giving you a front row seat at TopShop’s live streamed fashion show.

While VR is loud and proud and gets everyone excited with big sci-fi ideas, AR is much more implementable from a marketing standpoint, and experts predict that AR will continue to outpace VR in terms of market share.

Video Content

In the age of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, mobile video marketing is one of, if not the, most important digital marketing trends today and this is likely to remain so for years to come.

With six out of 10 people saying they would rather watch videos online than on television and with more than 500 hours of video being uploaded on to YouTube every minute as well as it becoming the second biggest search engine in the world (after Google), it is no wonder that businesses and brands are turning to video to engage and ultimately convert their target audience.

Google have noticed this shift and have taken to rewarding video producers, with websites that include video being 53 times more likely to receive a first page spot in search results. Why you ask? Because video improves SEO, (search engine optimisation)especially when they include text overlays or closed captions, in addition to your video’s description, title and file name.

Some brands are taking video marketing one step further, by personalising their video content to suit the consumer they are targeting and turning them into loyal customers. A great example of this is when sports brand, Nike, created the ’Your Year with Nike video campaign, in which they created 100,000 personalised animated videos, extracting users’ data from their fitness app to tell the individual stories of the fitness goals achieved by the users of the app in the previous year.

Blockchain Technology

The uses of blockchain technology are far more wide-reaching than just the financial or tech worlds,

it is also making waves in the world of digital marketing. Blockchain can eliminate the digital marketing middleman; build trust by means of transparency, drive public accountability as well as offer a number of benefits to branding.

Three ways in which blockchain may be of use to digital marketers are as follows:

1. Tracking media buys - traditional online advertising can mean keeping track of a lot of data.

We buy ad space on various sites and platforms, each of which has its own method of charging for impressions and managing payments.

Mistakes can be easily made, and it can be time consuming going from one platform to another, making sure our ads are returning on their investment.

Blockchain technology can be used to connect media buyers and providers more directly. It can track transactions in a more efficient and reliable way, and even be used to manage multiple channels simultaneously. 

AdBitmedia is one to watch and a frontrunner when it comes to applying blockchain technology to media buys.

2. Handling social media impressions - impressions indicate the number of times that your social media content has been viewed. Blockchain technology may most often be used to track financial transactions, but it’s also useful for processing social transactions (such as impressions). A blockchain system can record and store information about your social campaigns in a way that makes it far easier to turn the data into meaningful results.

3. Verifying online identities - One of the problems facing digital marketers is the growing prevalence of bots. Few platforms are immune to this issue; most social networks and other key sites are flooded with fake accounts that have no human presence behind them. Those bot accounts can inflate many of the numbers you need to track. For example, a significant portion of your Twitter followers may be bot accounts, along with your ad impressions. This means you may not have the reach your analytics might suggest, and some of your advertising budget is probably being wasted on views and clicks made by robots. Blockchain technology provides better means for verifying data, in a way that’s practically impossible to fake. Therefore, it can be used to verify your customers and other audience members.

Thoughtful, personalised marketing powered by big data, AI, and other innovative technologies will define the way brands communicate with customers. Appealing to an individual with conversational and visually engaging content are key trends informing the way brands are going to position themselves in the near future. In an industry often saturated with sensationalist talk around technology, we should be keeping a keen eye on practical and actionable improvements that we can implement into our existing digital marketing strategies.