Technology has transformed marketing by making campaigns more personalized and immersive for people and creating ecosystems that are more integrated and targeted for marketers. And it’s not just the interface between brands and people that have been transformed.

New technology in marketing has permeated the infrastructure and systems on which companies are built, delivering value to procurement and adding to the bottom line.

To better grasp why this is happening, we only need to look at where people get their information, their desired modes of entertainment and their shopping preferences.

Partnership Between Marketing and Technology

To really understand how best to apply new technology to a brand or product, marketers will need the assistance of their company’s technology, information, and legal departments.

The challenge for marketers will not be what to do with the data they collect, but how they use it. You can have the most sophisticated technology, but without marketing intelligence that unifies data insights, the technology will not deliver the ROI you expect.

Knowing Where Your Consumers Are

• Connectivity: There are about 4 billion internet users online, meaning that 50.8% of the global population is connected. In the next three years, China and India will add more internet users than what exists in the US today.
• Mobile: More than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones. It is anticipated that $93 billion will be spent on mobile ads this year, over $20 billion more than what will be spent on TV. E-Commerce: Over 2.14 billion people worldwide are expected to buy goods and services online in 2021.
• Entertainment: One-third of online activity is spent watching videos online, with half a billion people watching videos on Facebook every day.

Final Thoughts

Some technologies require minimal integration with legacy systems, while others demand extensive integration. However, the investment is justified by the amount of revenue these technologies are anticipated to bring in for companies. Greater digital interactions will generate more data sets, which will allow retailers to better customize promotions, prices and products for each customer, dynamically in real-time.