Where Marketing Is Headed In The Future 2-3 Years

In this episode we talk about: 

• The future of influencer and micro-influencer marketing
• Using AR and VR technology for marketing
• Voice Search Marketing - how Alexa, Siri, and Google are reshaping the future of search

Aaron: [00:00:16] Hello,and welcome to another exciting episode of the Marketing Natives. Today we havea really action-packed or hot topics today. Where is marketing headed in thenext two to three years? Some topics we're going to cover are influencers, ARand VR, and voice.

Christian: [00:00:35] Morespecifically voice search. Right. So to start off here with the influencers ormicro-influencers, this is something that I feel like in the last two years hasblown up in a lot of businesses. Even small businesses are using influencers ormicro-influencers. The only difference here between influencers ormicro-influencers are just- micro-influencers are tiny little people, right?That have tiny little smartphones.

Aaron: [00:01:02] Theyare- their smartphones are actually bigger, but the people are smaller.

Christian: [00:01:08] No,so micro-influencers are maybe people who don't have a huge reach like, I don'tknow, say some of these Vine stars. Gosh. What are their names?

Aaron: [00:01:18] Shonduras.He's like-

Christian: [00:01:21] Yeah,King Bach or Bach or whatever. Yes, some of these guys who got really famousfrom Vine, and then they went to Instagram and YouTube, and now they have ahuge following. I mean, in the millions.

Aaron: [00:01:34] Right.

Christian: [00:01:34] Iwould say those are influencers. Micro-influencers could be people who havemaybe 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 followers, engaged followers not bought followers,and just maybe there are, you know, micro-influencers around your community ormaybe even your state, your cities. So they're not huge in the millions, andthat's something that's sort of fairly new, I would say. And a lot of smallbusinesses are using micro-influencers to market to their audience.

Aaron: [00:02:04] Right.And this is- I can't remember which episode it was. We'd have to check our shownotes, but we did talk about influencer marketing specifically. We'll try tofind that and let you guys know later in the episode to go check out thatepisode, but we're going to see a trend of people using influencers a lot more.Influencing has been working for a very long time, but what's great aboutInstagram and Twitter and Facebook is that you can leverage those people for avery effective cost. And you don't need to be in front of, you know, millionsof people. Even tens of thousands of people or even 5,000 people is sometimesmore than enough for what you need. So I think we're going to see a lot morepeople using micro-influencers. A lot more local businesses using it. Wealready know that bigger companies use it all the time, but themicro-influencers, there's a huge niche there. And sometimes it doesn't evencost. You could give away a product for free and not really eat up anyadvertising or marketing dollars.

Christian: [00:03:05] Andif you're not familiar with how this actually works, basically you payinfluencer, a person who has a big following, and you tell them to use yourproduct or maybe even review your product or talk about your product with theirregular content. So this person is a YouTuber, and they make funny videos then.And then you sell coffee mugs. Maybe they can incorporate that coffee mugs insome other videos in order to sort of get that brand awareness or get yourproduct out there to new customers and new people. I mean, it has been workingvery well with bigger brands, and now is where smaller companies are usinginfluencers. So in the next two or three years, you're definitely going to seethis a lot more, and it's because people technically, you know, they like thisword of mouth marketing a lot better than this in your face pop-up marketingthat's happening online.

Aaron: [00:04:03] Right.I mean, we've seen a trend from outbound marketing which is like traditionalmarketing of, you know, push it in front of you as many times as possibleversus the inbound marketing, and influencer marketing is a very laissez-faireor like laid-back style marketing. So it is more effective long-term, andyou'll really start to see an increase in those people. I did go check up theepisode, and it was our first episode of the podcast.

Christian: [00:04:29] Really?

Aaron: [00:04:30] Notthe pilot, but Episode 1 of the podcast. So make sure you go check out thatone. It's about how a pizza shop can use influencer marketing to grow theirbusiness, and you guys can see a little bit or listen to a little bit moreinformation about how to use the influencers and how to necessarily acquirethem and then to use it for your brand. So that will break it down a little bitmore, but we do see a trend, an uptrend, in the next couple of years with usingmore influencers.

Christian: [00:04:59] Nowthis next technology that we're going to talk about is AR and VR. So they standfor augmented reality and virtual reality. The only difference between thesetwo is virtual reality, you are completely immersed. You have some kind ofcontraption, some kind of goggles and sometimes even controllers for yourhands, where you sort of get transported directly to a new world. That'svirtual reality, and then you have augmented reality which right now is verypopular among mobile devices. And they allow you to sort of enhance yourcurrent reality. So I was telling Aaron the other day about this new IKEA appwhere you sort of open up the IKEA app on your iPhone, and you're able to placefurniture inside of your home or apartment right from your phone. So you cansee exactly how the furniture will look in that little corner in your room.

Aaron: [00:05:59] Right.The actual size. Everything.

Christian: [00:06:01] Yeah,and you can move your phone around. You know, it has the camera open so you canmove your phone around and see exactly how it'd look with the shadows andeverything. It's kind of wild and crazy technology.

Aaron: [00:06:12] Right.And that app just for reference is called TapMeasure.

Christian: [00:06:18] No,that's a different one.

Aaron: [00:06:19] Oh,it is?

Christian: [00:06:19] Yeah,TapMeasure was the-

Aaron: [00:06:21] Oh,that's the actual ruler. So it's just called IKEA Place. Sorry, he downloadedtwo of them on my phone. So I have them here still. IKEA Place is the otherone.

Christian: [00:06:29] Yeah.

Aaron: [00:06:30] ButI could see this- this maybe a little bit farther out than two or three years,but even clothing where you could see an item, take a picture, and see what theshirt looks like on you without actually purchasing that shirt. Say oh, thisred looks good on me or this blue looks good on me. That may be a little bittoo far out, but who knows because it's moving very quickly. But definitely forinterior decorators, we can see like, you know, with IKEA's absolutely usingthat kind of technology there. Wow.

Christian: [00:07:05] Yeah.And I was looking at an article earlier today, and it says early evidence showsthat this technology can be effective for user engagement, brand exposure, andmarketing awareness. You can use it for things like, you know, like Aaron said,demonstrate product attributes and features like when you're trying new clothing.Like, you can move around and see how exactly how it's going to look. You cancommunicate brand communication. At the point of sale, you can provideimmersive branded entertainment experience. You can increase the excitement andengagement at trade shows, and you can add a new dimension to traditionalstorytelling. It also talks about a study from Nielsen that said that VRreceived a 17 percent higher emotional response than a 360 video and engagedusers for 16 percent longer in there. Now some other problems with VR and AR inmoving forward is, you know, having people adopt to this technology. You canthink back to, you know, when smartphones first came out. Definitely noteveryone was onboard with, you know, having a smartphone because honestly therewasn't very much stuff that they could do with it. It wasn't until the boom ofthe apps came out that now there's an app for everything, and yeah, everyonehas a smartphone because they can do a million different things with it. Rightnow this technology is so primitive and basic that there's really not a lotthat people can do with it. So that's why I guess adoption hasn't been as highbecause the features and all that stuff is typically not there yet.

Aaron: [00:08:49] Right.I was going to say you're going to probably see the biggest boom in targetingpeople who play video games especially for virtual reality because they'realready wanting that experience. So first person shooters, that kind ofaudience will probably see the biggest boom in virtual reality and augmentedreality. The way we're looking at this is like Christian said, you don't see asmany people who get off of work, and instead of going to play around on theirphone or play a game on their phone, they're putting on AR gog- or I mean, VRgoggles and playing around that way. Not yet anyway. So that could be thebiggest boom. I think the technology, the hardware needs to be updated beforethat happens. But I think that they're working on something like that. Forexample, the glasses and goggles right now are all clunky and everything. It'dwould be nice to just put on a pair of glasses like, you know, 3-D glasses orsomething, and that would really take the technology to a more practical levelor a mass level.

Christian: [00:09:44] Andalso, and we've seen this in our shopping malls here in Texas where I thinkSamsung was in Stonebriar Mall in Frisco.

Aaron: [00:09:53] Facebookwas there to doing the same thing.

Christian: [00:09:55] Nottoo long ago. Yeah. And that's the biggest hurdle is getting people to want tolearn about this technology and get them to start using it, and you do that bygoing out to malls like that and just showing off the technology to peoplebecause no one's going to go. Yeah. It's not a technology that you go out andjust buy out. You know, you go to AT&T store, and it's like oh, yeah, I'mlooking for some VR goggles. Like it's not the same as a smartphone right now.

Aaron: [00:10:19] Right.I think- I mean, so many- people like us or maybe people who really fall ontechnology would do that, but I saw like at the mall just doing someobservations that there was a lot of parents, like a bunch of moms and dads,30s, 40s, 50s, who were jumping into that VR stuff because it's cool, it'sexciting, and it's free. And then it's just about, I guess, the same example asgiving away free samples. Free samples work. So just trying to get them hookedon that, and I think the more that they do that, the more that they becomemass. And if you are I guess in another area and have this going on at yourmall, leave us a comment. We're curious to just, you know, where all theirtesting is at. Just kind of pushing it out there.

Christian: [00:11:01] AndI know industries that can definitely benefit from this, and they are right nowsort of testing travel, automobile, home decor like Ikea, we talked about, andI mean, those are things that are happening right now. In the future, I mean, Ibet you all type of businesses are going to be using in some way or capacity VRand AR technology.

Aaron: [00:11:25] Allright. So let's move on here to probably the most practical and one that'smaybe grown the fastest and may have the most market share or could potentiallyhave the most market share for like a mass audience because you see a lot goingon with it, and that is the voice search. Some examples of that are like Alexa.Those are pretty popular. Those are probably household names by now with Alexa.You have the Google Home, and then releasing what time? Is it early next year?The Apple Air-

Christian: [00:11:56] Ithink it's this-

Aaron: [00:11:57] HomePod.

Christian: [00:11:57] ThisChristmas. This winter. November I think. Maybe December. I don't know.

Aaron: [00:12:00] Yeah.So the Apple HomePod. So Apple's about to release theirs.

Aaron: [00:12:04] WhichI mean, they have the knowledge right now with Siri on our phones or computers,but they're bringing it, you know, basically the competition of Alexa. And thistechnology has been going on for a while, but now we're actually gettingdevices that the whole purpose of this device is to use that voice searchtechnology. Because even Google.com, they've had that little microphone on thecorner where you can, you know, from your computer or your phone click on itand do a search that way.

Aaron: [00:12:35] Yeah.It's crazy. A couple of years ago I remember when somebody first got the Alexa,and I was like well, what's it good for? It's pretty much another, I don'tknow, Bose system in your house to play music because you couldn't use it for abunch of things, but now I think you can order products from it. I think thatyou can check the weather. You can do- basically control your whole smarthouse. So if you have a nest or if you have- I can't remember.

Christian: [00:13:00] Smartfridge. Smart toaster. Everything.

Aaron: [00:13:04] Right.Coffee. You can control all of that there, and just by speaking, you know, findout all this stuff. So it's more hands-off, and it's, I guess, more passive init's- I don't know. It's just becoming much more popular.

Christian: [00:13:18] Andthe way this affects small businesses is that, you know, right now a lot ofpeople when they think about search engine marketing or search engineoptimization, they're thinking about those keywords words in order to pop up inthose searches. Now you've got to think about a more natural language andnatural way of searching because people are going to be using this more andmore, but they're still using the same, you know, search engine which is Google.But you have to think and change your way of thinking. Instead of just being,you know, two keywords for something, you may want to do longer keywords anduse more natural language in your content for your website.

Aaron: [00:13:58] Allright. So this is what's- I mean, we don't have enough time in the episode toreally cover more technology. So we may do this as an in-between-isode later onin the future, but this is where BitBranding thinks that marketing is headed inthe next two to three years. We'd love to hear your guys' feedback about howyour experiences are with these new technologies. Kind of see what you think,but if you are in your car or running or wherever you're at right now, go aheadand click that subscribe button so you guys don't miss any episodes. And thendo us an even bigger favor and share this episode. There's three buttons in theright hand corner of your app. If you click share this episode, you can post iton Facebook. You could share it with a friend. We would love for you to sharehowever you can. Sharing is caring.

Christian: [00:14:44] Yep.See you next week.