The Future in Marketing

I believe that the future in marketing lies heavily in social media and new technological and digital advances. With advanced GPS technology companies will be able to pinpoint where specific customers are and target them through their mobile devices dependent on their locations. So companies could send advertising via SMS or through an app when a past customer comes into a specific radius of one of their stores. This strategy could mean that brands would only need to target customers that they know like their products and who would have agreed to receive marketing in this way. We can see technology of this sort being used in cinemas through the app Cineme, which aims to improve the cinema experience by offering the chance to win prizes. 

Companies could copy this approach by creating apps that will target a customer when they approach their stores, offering them discounts, or just informing them of their latest products and deals. This way they are only targeting consumers who they know have an interest in their brand, shown by the fact that they downloaded the app. This could reduce costs to the firm and also appeal to consumers wanting relationships, as they could receive the communication direct from the brand in a personal way, therefore increasing the likelihood of creating loyal customers.

If the power consumers hold continues to increase in the future, then CRM will become more and more important in future strategies. Companies will have to consider what their customers need, want, and expect from them. They will not only have to represent this in their advertising campaigns, but also in the way that the business as a whole operates. The growth of the C2C markets could pose a threat to the traditional B2C markets, and as a result we could see more companies following in the footsteps of Amazon and Asos, in providing a C2C service to maintain their customers still use their services.