Marketing Trends and the Future of Social Media
Bocconi Students for Innovation had the opportunity to visit the Deloitte’s Milan offices on the 25th of October and benefit from the company’s expertise in digital marketing. Indeed, Deloitte Italia has developed a solid skillset in this domain, as digital marketing has surpassed TV ads in 2017, and is believed to become a $300 billion industry by 2021.
Deloitte organized a coaching session for our members, during which the principles and goals of digital marketing were clarified. While some may believe that data analytics is the most efficient means for companies to predict patterns and optimize their ad campaigns, the exponential growth of this industry has generated new tools and new approaches that will certainly surpass big data. Digital marketing is characterized by a high turnover in terms of technologies and consequently, strategies. While data will remain the raw material firms use, the ways to engage with potential customers have experienced great diversification.
As a matter of fact, digital marketers are now operating according to specific frameworks. The conversion funnel, for example, breaks down the five steps which result in customer acquisition and retention, enabling analysts to improve methodically each process like awareness, engagement, conversion, loyalty and retention.Furthermore, communication follows a well-defined strategy, as illustrated by the Hygiene-Hub-Hero approach. Content frequency goes down as we go from Hygiene to Hero, while impact goes up. A company must articulate all three to cover the entire spectrum, regularly producing content to build awareness and designing an impactful campaign once in a while to be a global conversation topic.
Technology has enabled more and more interaction between businesses and customers, as shown by the Volvo Instagram campaign or the Michal Kors augmented reality campaign, which allowed Facebook users to try on sunglasses using this technology.Automation is also increasingly involved, as re-marketing is all about machine learning, to keep updating targeted ads that are tailored to users’ browsing interests. Programming ads also incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning to accurately target customers. Digital marketing has generated new industries, as it has created space for influencers, whose job is to endorse a product, data analysts, programmers and marketing strategists.
Finally, BSI members had the chance to discuss the future of social media in the Western World with digital marketing specialists; and the global consensus has been that the centralization of functionalities articulated with hyper-specialized and small scale apps will dominate the digital landscape in the coming years.
Sami Norredine
Build Sustainable Innovation 