One of the most overlooked elements of technology is the interactive nature and experience it provides. Let’s take a look at some of the most successful technology trends of recent years — virtual reality games (VRG), flash mobs, viral videos, social sharing, etc. The common thread that ties these together is the interactivity they're offering the user who partakes in the act or the audience who willfully watches or consumes to feel part of the experience.
Digital platforms eliminate barriers that limit interaction, and today many people can play in a VRG, and just as many can show up to participate in a flash mob. Even viral videos encourage activity – they urge each viewer to forward and share the media to others, thus creating a sense of instant inclusion.
Compare that to traditional advertising. People don’t interact with billboards, TV commercials, or radio ads.
A large part of digital marketing is being able to provide an experience to consumers, which traditional marketing cannot. Digital marketing allows create an opportunity to connect customers with the product in question. A while back, big companies called the shots and told consumers what was the best product in the market place using billboards and newspapers.
Today, digital marketing empowers the consumer and ensures that the value of the product is aligned to the consumers’ values and interest. People want to feel that their feedback is heard, understood, and taken into consideration, and when they get to participate in bringing a product to fruition, they feel a sense of engagement and identification with the product, which often translates into big sales.
What can you do as a digital marketing expert?
You can help your clients get their customers engaged. Encouraging them to share their ideas and feedback in a way that allows the business to better understand what their demographic wants. By creating a direct dialogue with consumers, you create transparency which results in building your business’ credibility and consumer trust.
Again, on this front, there is really no contest between digital and traditional marketing strategies. One adapts to meet the needs of the people, while the other relies on the theory that your customers will settle for whatever you’re selling.
What is this digital revolution, anyway?
We talk about online business as an opportunity to become part of the “digital revolution,” but what does that really mean? There are a lot of inconsequential “buzzwords” that often get thrown around – isn’t this just another one that doesn’t really mean anything?
The digital revolution is, in part, the very rapid shift from the world’s traditional commercial business model to an online one.
In the United States, the first official paid television advertisement was aired on July 1st 1941 - more than 70 years ago! Now, consider how young the Internet really is and how fast internet connected technologies (ICTs) have begun to supplant T.V. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1989, this created the foundations for this major shift and later introducing various new advertising platforms, such as social media marketing, blogging, PPC, SEO and more.
The widespread availability of broadband Internet services created the path for the digital revolution.
Now people can watch videos, download files, read blogs and play games with virtually no limits — they can even multitask to perform these activities simultaneously. This has enabled branding and digital marketing efforts to explore territories uncharted by traditional methods, prompting more and more investment into these areas.
The digital marketing field is growing rapidly at a time when the economy struggles to slowly inch forward, if at all. The additional investment into digital marketing made by the retail sector alone reaches into the billions.
So if you want to be a part of something huge, something showing no signs of slowing down – then you definitely want to join the digital revolution.
It’s the future!
Does anyone remember Star Trek and the touch-screen pads they used? How about The Jetsons and their endless array of seemingly far-fetched devices that could do just about everything? Video phones, voice commands, computers that play all kinds of music, wherever and whenever?
Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t mean to alarm you, but the future is already here!
Smart-phones, tablet computers, 3D televisions, and motion-sensitive gaming consoles are everywhere. And yet, reaching the future doesn’t mean that it’s time to stop innovating — these exciting inventions are stepping stones we must use to leap forward to the next great set of ideas that are just waiting to be discovered.
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