10.12.2019
How to innovate in marketing
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We are all witnesses of the fast-paced rhythm in which the world is changing. New technologies and customer behavior are subjected to change on a daily basis and successful marketers need to keep up with the latest trends and, most importantly, to anticipate them!
This is why innovation and innovative approaches are the rocket that can take us to unexplored journeys and unchartered territories. The best part: there’s always enough room in the market to improve products, services, and brand experiences!
What does innovation stand for?
According to the business dictionary, innovation is the process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay. In business and marketing, it often results when ideas are applied by a company or group of people in order to satisfy the needs and meet the customers’ expectations.
What does one innovate?
There’s room for innovation for literally everything we do. You can innovate processes, services, the structure of your company, the approach, you can innovate systems and technology. Anything can be a subject to innovation, as long as the idea is well thought and documented.
Innovation in marketing
When it comes to marketing, there are many methods and approaches that can help us innovate, among which we can mention the use of intelligence, solutions, technology, and talent. Needless to say, we like to think that here, at diARK, we have plenty of the latter. Let’s move onto some of our favorite approaches:
#1: Know your market
Always have in mind the market trends and the type of customer you will be addressing. In order to innovate, you should already know the latest consumer trends and know what your consumer truly wants. This is why knowing what goes on in your market segment is crucial.
#2: Have cultural appropriation
Cultural appropriation is in close relation with market knowledge. After analyzing the market trends, then you can create the right strategy and the right messages to reach your targeted public. All famous brands do this and adapt their content to popular culture, types of cultures around the globe and address topics of interest.
#3: Use virtual reality
If years ago, virtual reality sounded very futuristic, today is happening! A VR experience is appropriate for so many industries, be it fashion, travel, shopping, events or film industry. For product activation, VR can offer your customers a unique experience. Plus, there are already many tools developed for this, so why not take advantage of them?
#4: Use artificial Intelligence
With the help of Artificial intelligence in Marketing, you can target the right prospects, acquire consumer data and develop highly personalized content. Artificial intelligence analyses data and provides consumer insights and uses machine learning to help businesses anticipate their customer’s needs and of course, enrich the customer experience.
#5: User-generated content
User-generated content is a very authentic way of encouraging others to buy your products or check your page out more often. If you integrate UGC in your day to day communication, you can increase your conversion rates, have higher engagement, more orders or greater order values. Lack of authenticity can be a huge menace to your brand, but user-generated content is a game-changer solution that can set you apart from those that are failing. We have a special dedicated article for this here.
#6: AI-powered chatbots
The chatbots are a revolutionary invention, notably in the customer support field. With the help of AI technology and machine learning, chatbots have become highly predictive and are an effective way of communicating with the customers, while responding to their requests. They can be easily called the customers’ personal assistant. Chatbots have had an enormous evolution since their implementation and are now a solution to responding to the market.
Take notes from the leaders
Let’s have a look at one of the most known examples of innovative Marketing: Netflix. Just try to think of someone who doesn’t have a Netflix account or a shared Netflix account. It’s hard, isn’t it? This platform has over 158 million subscribers and their multi-channel approach has managed to bring a resounding success. They know the market, the cultures, and trends to which they were addressing and used the technology to extract data and analyze it. By doing so, they innovated the customer experience through personalization, high-quality content and use technology to create interaction with the user. Netflix also made sure to develop the right marketing campaigns and think the strategy very well, as well as managed to anticipate the consumer trend and launched the right platform, at the right time.
Our secret
There may come a time when a customer would feel the need to innovate something in their marketing approach, without exactly being able to pinpoint what needs to be innovated. This is a situation which forces one to know everything about the company, as well as everything about the market in which the client activates. So, what we do is start brainstorming!
We analyze the current situation of the customer, then use a breakdown structure and see where there’s room for improvement. To sum up, we assess the situation and we use all our knowledge – especially regarding the future marketing trends, then we formulate recommendations. Before jumping to conclusions, have in mind that when your goal is to innovate you should also be prepared for potential difficulties that you may encounter during your project: the first that comes to mind is the budget and fear of failure.
Our main weapon against these constraints is taking a risk and believing in the power of change and of course, getting out of the comfort zone. Therefore, our advice is that if you have uncovered a need in the market, you have to believe in your idea and in its added value and pursue it. Last but not least, if you have a great idea but need help to make it come true, you can let the specialists be in charge!
