For those working in the field of marketing communications– or marcom– it’s now more important than ever to keep up with developing technologies. New and emerging tech presents marketing communications professionals with innovative ways of connecting with would-be customers and driving engagement. Here are some of the marcom tech trends that you should be paying attention to in 2018.
- Artificial intelligence– While fiction may present AI in the form of sentient computers or humanlike robots, in the real-world AI tools employ machine learning to process and analyze data more quickly and efficiently than any human could. In marketing communications, AI can be utilized to automate data gathering and analysis, and even tasks such as social media or email follow-up.
- Cloud computing– With ever more data being gathered and analyzed by businesses across the board, the requirement for storage capacity is fueling unprecedented growth in cloud computing. Marketing communications can benefit from the large capacity of cloud-based data storage, while many businesses are also deploying cloud-hostedsoftware as a service(SaaS), platform as a service(PaaS) or infrastructure as a service(IaaS) solutions.
- Internet of Things – More and more consumers are connecting smart devices to home networks, from smart TVs and refrigerators to heating and lighting controls. While we are in the early days of such tech being widely adopted, it seems likely that there will be future potential for marcom professionals to utilize the Internet of Things to connect with consumers.
- Drones – Little more than a fringe hobby a few years ago, businesses are increasingly using drones for a variety of uses; Amazon has even trialed a delivery service using unmanned aerial vehicles. From aerial photography and mapping to entertainment, there is the potential for marketing communications professionals to use drones for data collection, interactive marketing campaigns and more.
Augmented reality– The worldwide craze that accompanied the release of the Pokémon GoAR game in 2016 showed how this technology has the potential to immerse smartphone users and, more importantly, keep them engaged. Marketing communications professionals will be able to use this technology in a number of ways, not least in allowing consumers to interactively experience products or services in real time from their own home.