Digital Disruption from EX²

Google has been the dominant global search engine provider for two decades now. But over the last twenty years, the firm has expanded into many other areas, particularly concentrating on how people access information and how to measure and track their activity.

Legacy marketing tactics that require interrupting and refocusing the consumer have been supplanted by context marketing. In the digital age, it is the context of interactions that determines how people respond to your actual product and your marketing message. Context marketing is founded on trust building while being non-intrusive in ways that engage customers on their own terms.

In a survey conducted by Enterprise Mobility Exchange in Q2 2017, 47 percent of IT executives said their enterprise is using or pursuing some form of artificial intelligence. But the promise and potential of AI is overshadowed by a misplaced belief that it represents a threat to marketers.

In some marketing circles, audience targeting has emerged as the successor to the dominance of keywords in marketing. The basic premise behind audience targeting is matching consumers with advertisements based on demographics, interests and behavioral data. While audience targeting still holds a prominent place, it is now rivaled or surpassed by contextual targeting as the new cornerstone of marketing, but that depends on who you ask.

Not too long ago, most marketers viewed cybersecurity as just an IT issue. Even as breaches became more common, many companies failed to realize how interconnected the two departments were. The theft of customer data, for example, creates huge problems for marketers; if the company loses the trust of its customers, it is up to the marketing department to win it back, rebuild relationships and undermine the efforts of the competition to wield the breach as a weapon against the company. Furthermore, as the use of marketing tools increases, the number of potential vulnerabilities also increases. As a result, marketing professionals are becoming more aware of cybersecurity.

Very few purchases are made based entirely on logic. For example, when it comes to where you live, real estate agents know homebuyers have an immediate emotional reaction to a home. If this reaction is negative, the shopper will be less receptive to the intrinsic value: the convenient location, the unique features of the home, or the potential for the home with a few improvements. Sales of vehicles are similar: salespeople look for physical evidence of a shopper's emotional reaction to a vehicle such as facial features relaxing or a bit of a "twinkle" in the shopper’s eyes. Even shoppers who take great pride in ferreting out bargains on mundane purchases can be influenced by their emotions. A shopper may carefully compare the prices and quantities on every brand of green beans to determine the best value — and then not choose the brand with the lowest price because the shopper heard an unflattering story about the company.

Since the earliest days of marketing, word-of-mouth advertising has been one of the most productive ways to drive sales and brand recognition. Whether "it" is a movie, a laundry detergent, a restaurant, a new car or a roofing company, people like to know what others think about it. This same tendency to seek the opinions of others is also found when people are considering an app.

Every major technological breakthrough has changed marketing. Consider how marketing campaigns were conducted prior to the invention of radio and television: display ads in newspapers and magazines, printed brochures left on doorsteps, signs in store windows, door-to-door salesmen, ads in local phone books and similar low-tech methods. The Internet, mobile devices and the Internet of Things have all been innovations that have altered the way that marketers deliver their messages, interact with consumers and built long-term relationships.

Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Echo Boomers, have been a hot topic in recent years. Why?

• Millennials will comprise 75 percent of the world's workforce by 2030.
• Millennials comprise 26 percent of the American population and account for approximately $600 billion in spending nationally and an estimated $1.3 trillion globally.