Marketers are entering into a new era of opportunities as they start to combine the best of what UX, social CRM and AI has to offer
If we continue evolving at this rate every advertisement we see, whether we know it or not, will soon be 100 percent targeted at us and our interests.
This is without doubt a once-in-a-generation opportunity for marketers to prove to consumers that they have shifted away from their dated over-invasive style and truly offer an enhanced, personalised UX.
The next juggling act marketers need to adopt involves using cool new technology, such as facial recognition, to shape and transform a new generation of UX.
It is not enough to be using the latest, splashiest technology: It’s about taking the time to craft a campaign that services all consumers’ needs. Otherwise there is a risk of diluting the marketing campaign to become merely a “clever trick”.
It is high time to revisit old school marketing techniques and define what needs to stay and what is now redundant. Whilst it may feel tempting to throw out all the old rules and start afresh, it is much more about garnering the best technology we have to hand and defining how to use it to enhance the best creative marketing skills we have honed over the years.
Technology has progressed but the customer journey has never altered which means we still need to start from the top of the sales funnel and narrow it down. Even the most sophisticated marketing campaign still starts with the bigger audience and explains who it is through to why it is better than its competition. It’s still crucial to invest time and money in every stage of an audience’s journey to prepare them for conversion and give them all the information they need, encouraging them to like the brand before expecting them to convert.
What has changed however is the accuracy with which this can now be done and this offers marketers numerous new opportunities for refining their message to better suit their exact audience.
The likes of facial recognition is set to enhance the marketer’s toolkit. The market for facial recognition is expected to grow from $3.35 billion in 2016 to $7.76 billion by 2022, and at least part of that growth will be due to new advertising initiatives involving the technology. Little wonder really as it offers marketers unmatched analytics and insights.
Being able to accurately read a person’s mood and therefore gauge creative variations against prospective audiences will mean being able to tailor a message or even a campaign specifically to them, and there is no doubt that working with a more engaged user who has opted in, will mean higher conversion and increased customer acquisition rates.
For the time being most of us are still using facial recognition in quite basic applications from Facebook’s use of a face recognition algorithm to guess who is in the pictures we post through to airlines introducing facial recognition to speed up self-service bag drops.
But once the shackles are off we will enter a new era where advertising will no longer be invasive or off-target, instead we will be creating hyper-personalised UX that consumers will actually enjoy.
Retargeting will really come into its own as personalised offers will be tailored to people who specifically showed an interest in a given product, leaving marketers free to focus on how they want to engage their audience in the most immersive and meaningful way.
It is less about being innovative, rather it is about using innovation in a strategic way to achieve the right results.
Customised UX must align with consumers interests, emotions, and preferences if brands are to engage with willing customers.
As the continued popularity of lenses and filters on social media shows, there is definitely an appetite for advertising content that puts the user in the front seat.
Quite frankly there is nothing more engaging than having the customer play a central role in the advertisement and marketers are now poised to deliver this as they seamlessly mesh personalisation with next gen campaigns that are rapid, interactive and truly engaging.
About the Author
Joel Davis, co-founder of adtech gurus, Mighty Social.Mighty Social is one of the winners of Deloitte Tech Fast 50 for two years running and ranked in the top 20% of the Inc. 5000 List of Europe’s Fastest-Growing Companies.
