Saying that the use of modern technologies is changing the way sales and Marketing work is an understatement. In fact, one wouldn’t be wrong to say that the advances in technology are revolutionising the world that we live in. Namely, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and high-level analytics are the biggest drivers in the world of marketing right now.

One of the abilities that Big Data offers to the marketers is the prediction power beyond anyone’s expectations. Those prediction powers are changing the way marketers approach their tasks. They no longer have to make blind guesses regarding the potential reactions of their customers. In fact, they can get full details regarding their purchasing habits. And they can use that information to push their customers towards their products by analysing their behavioural patterns.

Also, the applications of AI and analytics can transform the sales function. The predictive capabilities can arm the marketers with the knowledge they need to direct the future behaviour of their customers.

The Leap from Mass Marketing to Individual Advertisement

Marketing as such changes with every new media channel. Namely, ever since television came to people’s homes, mass marketing has been the most popular way to advertise products and services. And now, the advancements in the areas of the Internet and mobile phones are changing the game once more.

Nowadays, advertisers have the ability to customise their advertising messages. In fact, they can analyse the market to personalise their messages according to a number of factors. They are finally capable of granulating the market to a very fine state. And thanks to that fragmentation of the market, they can hyper-personalise their efforts. In fact, they can customise their ads at an individual level.

Advertisers as Attention Merchants and the
Abilities of Cutting-Edge Technologies

When you boil it down to its basic form, marketing is all about Attention. The main goal of advertisers is to capture and sustain the attention of potential customers. One of the most popular approaches is to “hook” the customer to the product and get their attention. From there, the advertising efforts work to hold the attention and keep the consumers on the hook.

For that reason, many are willing to call all advertisers “attention merchants”. After all, that is exactly what they are trying to accomplish. Most, if not all of marketing and sales efforts, go straight towards consumer attention.

The fact that the inventions of the TV, and later, the Internet, have affected the marketing in dramatic ways is no surprise. In fact, many marketing books and texts deal with those issues. In fact, one of the leading experts in the field of marketing, Philip Kotler, uses those advances as examples of how the media can revolutionise marketing.

However, there are some significant differences in the newest cultural shift in marketing. Namely, marketers no longer try to grab the attention and sustain it directly. Instead, marketing agencies are trying to predict the future stages of consumer behaviour. In doing so, they are using those predictions to seek the attention of their consumers subliminal manner.

Social Media and News Feed Personalisation

Marketing agencies are becoming very powerful in the world of social media. Namely, they can use cutting-edge technologies to personalise your news feed. In fact, they can even offer friend suggestion for you.

This customisation power comes from careful analysis of your browsing and clicking history. Every like or share you hand out feeds straight into Facebook’s algorithms. That algorithm will use the data you give it to personalise what you will see from there on. And before you know it, your news feed will be full of products that might genuinely interest you.

Furthermore, using your social media accounts on other websites on the internet leaves a significant digital footprint. Namely, they can actually track and log every single time you visit certain websites.

The Value of Data

One of the big truths about the contemporary world is that data is everything. So with that in mind, every bit of information can become a gold nugget in the hands of an expert. Everything you do on the Internet or with your phone is a source of data for advertisers. And they can use that data to personalise their advertisements according to your habits specifically.

However, the data gathering is not really solely limited to the online world. The advances of technologies such as RFID  (Radio Frequency Identification) are allowing marketers to track people in the physical stores too. They can then use the information they gather that way to adjust their sales experience. By tracking all of the customers that go through their stores, they can identify the hotspots of attention and use them to increase the effectiveness of their point-of-sale marketing efforts.

Changes to Basic Sales Strategies

Even the pure-play sales are changing with the times. The changes start with something as simple as the door-to-door salespeople. Nowadays, salespeople tend to carry around smartphones that allow them to know exactly which doors to knock on.

Their devices tell them which neighbourhoods have consumers that are willing to buy their products. And thanks to their smartphones, they can save a lot of time and effort, while, at the same time, they can increase their success rates.

In the End

Smart technologies and the advancements of the 21st century are giving a lot of power to marketers. And thanks to that power, experts can reap the benefits of the economies of scale, while still providing individualised marketing campaigns.

Furthermore, they can reach large consumer bases and interact with them with relative ease. The automation of the value chains of marketing allows them to expedite the entire process.

In addition, retailers are also adapting their point of sale marketing according to the data they gather over any given period of time. Thanks to cutting-edge technologies, they can optimise the marketing and sales effort to provide the best customer experience.

Overall, as we have said earlier, the development of new technologies such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence is revolutionising the world of marketing and sales.

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