Modern Marketing in Fourth Industrial Revolution

While we stand on the verge of technological revolution, only innovation can bring the miracle with long-term gains in productivity and efficiency. Considering the fact we will be in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution five to ten years down the line, you can expect faster communication and advanced automation with an increasing amount of data. Where there are plenty of growth opportunities, you will also witness a “compete and win” attitude in this emerging global economy. Profound brands have already started using AI (Artificial Intelligence) and chatbots to meet their consumer needs. To sustain and succeed, you need to deliver differentiation in creating stories and experiences for your customer.You need to embrace the following changes to ensure your business is future-proof:

Purchasing decisions are driven by immediate answers on demand. While all the information is at the fingertip of the customers, they hardly rely on sales to guide them through purchasing decisions. Seeing the agent’s unavailability, conversational bots play a remarkable role in the fourth industrial revolution for many mainstream brands like Facebook and Microsoft. The more comfortable users become with this form of communication, the more marketing potential there is for businesses. Continuous AI-based learning and improvements can give you a competitive advantage over other channels. For example, if you can provide some predictive choices for customers after several purchases, then it will become a delightful experience for the customer.

The massive amount of data we have been collecting has created an overabundance of information – unified and siloed. Major brands are planning to deploy or are in the midst of implementing predictive and AI-powered analytics along with a Data Management Platform. While doing that, they are facing challenges with the last mile adoption in achieving customer 360 views. Customer 360 empowers your business to interact with more relevant and hyper-personalized messages whenever your customers or prospects engage with your business. However, it’s important to obtain permission in order to use consumer data and avoid penalties. Countries in Europe have already implemented legal frameworks and guidelines (GDPR) on the usage of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) by customers.

There are more than 5000 tools globally emerging to address marketing automation needs. They are not merely an email automation tool, but they are aiming to build intelligent multi-channel marketing capabilities. Most of them cover the basic activities which include contact management, list segmentation, lead scoring, lead nurturing, A/B testing of landing pages & offers, email marketing, performance measurement, and reporting. Capturing customer information at every touchpoint and unifying the customer view through advanced analytics and dashboard will definitely add an extra mile to traditional marketing automation. Also, effective implementation, ongoing management, monitoring, and evolution are critical.

There are many implications and challenges of the fourth industrial revolution for your brand and business. Despite these, envisioning a future-proof business will lead to a significant strategic shift’ as companies across verticals are re-evaluating their business strategies or considering consolidation in order to compete differently. Clear, connected, and purposeful marketing creates countless opportunities to engage and assist consumers. Adding the right talent to the business by foreseeing the future is also a critical aspect of the fourth industrial revolution. Creative and innovative endeavors should be rewarded to encourage ideation and innovation. It is high time to be familiar with these fast-moving developments of digital transformations and search for ways to reestablish your unique ownership in targeted areas.