Future Proofing Marketing

As an introduction to a new unit in college, my tutor showed the class a video on Twitter of Mark Schaefer talking about how the industry has changed since he started in it.
One particular quote stood out to me, “I watch more television that I ever have in my life. I don’t see ads - it’s on Netflix”. Even though he watches a medium which is known to be riddled with ads, he now sees none of them because of the on-demand service that he uses to access the content on. He went on to say that he listens to a lot of radio, but it’s on Spotify.

The media that is being consumed in this day and age leaves no ‘ad gaps’ for marketers; which is why consumers are becoming harder and harder to reach. It’s almost like marketers are a victim of their own success by persuading consumers to use products that give them less marketing opportunities.

IKEA recently carried out an SEO campaign in Sweden to appeal to their younger audience. The marketing project manager said, “...our younger audience aren’t watching TV… they’re turning to Google to answer every question they have”.

Digital Marketing is all about honing it on consumers’ usage patterns and utilising that information to target them on the platforms that they are using. 20 years ago the answers would mostly lie in TV and print advertising. Now, the marketing landscape is a lot broader.

IKEA really took this in their stride and, with Google’s help, found out the top 200 search terms related to relationship problems. They then renamed some of their key products to reflect those search terms. For example; a day bed became ‘my partner snores’, a 3 port USB charger was named ‘he doesn’t text me back’.

The idea was designed to prove that IKEA’s products have a genuine presence in life by giving them a deeper emotional meaning; the 25% sales increase of some of the items proved that this concept really worked.

It also goes to show that turning a product into a solution for a Googled problem really is the new way to market it in 2019.

But it wasn’t just Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that IKEA touched upon in their campaign.
Carin Jacobsson, the Ikea marketing project manager, realises the value of brand and customer loyalty and the importance of building relationships. “If you have a relationship with a company you love, you’ll never leave” is something that he said regarding the SEO campaign.

Jacobsson also said that “we’ve come to a time where companies need to earn the respect of consumers” which fits perfectly into what Schaefer said which was that when he started in the marketing business, brands told consumers who they were. Whereas now consumers tell each other what a brand is; if the consumer trusts a brand, that brand then has a good reputation. It is no longer about a brand telling the consumer that they have a good reputation.

Consumers have a lot more choice in the age of the internet and so finding the best deal for them is easier than ever. Which is why brand and customer loyalty is so important, but so is digital marketing!