Marketing gets more challenging by the minute; this is mainly due to the hyper-competitive nature of nearly every industry. Consumers also add significant hurdles as they are becoming increasingly resistant and unaffected by promotional techniques.
This means that for an enterprise to survive, innovation is a necessity. The innovation process requires full management and control of creative ideas, procedures, and products that help build sustainable and profitable pipelines and funnels.
When speaking to innovative marketing management for enterprise organizations, key tasks that need to be closely monitored include consumer research surrounding needs and desires, concept and prototype evaluations, and novel marketing methodologies utilized in new campaigns.
Innovative marketing is vital for businesses to maintain – and grow – their position within an industry. It is important to know what revolutionary trends are coming down the pipeline to keep your company ahead of the curve.
Here are the 5 most prolific trends in innovative marketing today.
Trend #1: Powerful Technologies Create Smarter Innovation Processes
In the modern world, technology rules all.
As technology relates to innovation marketing, digital platforms enable enterprise managerial teams to produce more efficient and effective workflows by providing tools that surpass human capabilities.
This is fostered by creating more transparent and inclusive communications among teams (more on that in a moment), creating lean innovation structures for a brand to eliminate overlapping tasks, and integrating advanced analytics data that drives business focuses and modifications in a positive direction.
Furthermore, machine learning and AI engender innovations within an organization and on the consumer-facing front. For instance, these technologies can be applied to evaluate and direct the innovation process itself.
Enterprises that employ innovation management, or idea software, provide internal teams with a competitive edge as robust and intelligent tools enable the creation of smarter workflows, deeper and more comprehensive communications, campaign creations, personalized consumer profiles, and gamification features for increased engagement, all supplied through an easily managed and customized interface.
This type of software enables enterprises to launch innovation campaigns and initiatives in less time, and with greater effectiveness.
Other technologies that are current taking center stage include machine learning and artificial intelligence, creating massive waves in how businesses market to consumers by providing more personalized content and engagement methods.
While AI can be a costly endeavor for enterprises to shoulder, the recent Salesforce State of Marketing report uncovered that, “. . . 57%of marketers using AI say it’s absolutely or very essential in helping their company create 1-to-1 marketing across every touchpoint.” The same report indicated that “high performers” are 2.2x more likely to be utilizing AI when compared to “underperformers”.
Trend #2: Collaborative Efforts Increase
Marketing campaigns have been traditionally handled by marketing teams. This has been fundamentally altered by technological advancements. This is largely because advertising has become digitized in many ways. Organizations are beginning to recognize that innovation can come from anywhere; not just the group designated to handle the efforts.
The concept of open innovation, which is defined as, “. . . a situation where an organization doesn’t just rely on their own internal knowledge, sources and resources. . . but also uses multiple external sources (such as customer feedback, published patents, competitors, external agencies, the public etc.) to drive innovation,” is a powerful framework for enterprises to implement.
Internally crowdsourcing new ideas not only opens a broader range of perspectives and novel concepts, but it also shows that a company values employee input. Additionally, partnering with other companies can be a valuable source of generating new innovations and alternative activities that can shake up a brand’s stagnant thinking.
However, the most important aspect of open innovation comes from consumer commentary; this helps enterprises to better understand customer needs and create deeper brand loyalty.
Trend #3: Augmented Reality Implementation
While VR never panned out as the major marketing boon that it was touted to be two years ago, AR is trending strong in nearly all industries.
Much of its AR’s marketing prominence was derived from the Pokemon Go craze that swept the world in 2016, amassing more than 650 million downloads in its first week.
Since then, AR has continued bolstering innovative marketing efforts across a myriad of niches. One of the more successful examples came from Ikea; the brand developed an AR app that enabled shoppers to place furniture in their home before committing to a purchase. Additionally, makeup brand L’Oréal also launched an augmented reality app for its product lines.
Both examples mark an important trend in innovative marketing as this type of “phy-gital” merger provides a deeply engaging experience for consumers. The personal intimacy in which people use such applications naturally helps to create brand advocates and strong word-of-mouth marketing.
In case you’re not convinced of this trend, consider the fact that Apple has doubled-down on augmented reality with its AR-capable iPhone X and its yet-to-be-released AR headset.
As this type of tech continues to leak into the mainstream, enterprises should be gearing up to create branded content for the medium.
Trend #4: Boosts in Chatbots
Chatbots provide enterprises with automated marketing capabilities that link directly to customer service. Considering the expedient nature of nearly everything these days, consumers are increasingly demanding (and even expecting) immediate answers to questions and concerns.
An increasing number of organizations are therefore electing to employ bots to deliver real-time information to supplement their digital marketing efforts.
This type of innovation should not be overlooked considering that most consumers utilize social media daily. In fact, over 90% of Facebook users access the platform through their mobile device at different times in the day.
If your company has yet to develop its own chatbot, this should be listed highly on its innovation to-do list.
Trend #5: Personalization Peaks
What all these trends culminate to is a greater level of personalization for consumers. Innovation management software enables open innovation (among other benefits), AR provides deeply intimate experiences, and chatbots cater to consumer whims at a moment’s notice.
This boils down to the rise of account-based marketing (ABM) that provides tailored content and experiences to specific users. When leveraging this methodology in conjunction with AI, enterprises can gain far greater insights into specific consumers and start providing relevant 1:1 experience based off that information.
Should enterprises deploy ABM software from organizations like Adobe or Optimizely, they can begin to serve custom content to consumers in a similar way that Netflix recommends what to watch next.
Those who are responsible for innovative marketing and management have the task of utilizing systems that will most easily facilitate growth while opening lines of communication to bring in more novel ideas. All these trends are important to innovative practices, and when looked at through fresh eyes, ingenious new processes, products, and campaigns can manifest.
