While sitting in the lobby of a plush hotel, the author and former business executive Seth Godin conducted an experiment. Noting that several people were reading newspapers, he asked each if they could recall, without looking, any company that had taken out a full-page advertisement in the paper they had just read. Not one reader could name a single company.
There was a time when paying for any form of advertising was guaranteed to result in increased sales. Today, with audiences spread across a far wider range of platform and declining attention spans among audiences, it’s far harder for brands to capture the attention of their potential customers. Read on to learn about the forthcoming trends in the world of business as predicted by Sage.
The rise of chatbots
The ability to connect with customers across a range of social platforms is likely to grow in importance in the years to come, but the way in which that connection takes place is set to change. According to a study by Gartner, 20% of all business content is likely to be machine generated by the end of 2018, and this figure is likely to increase substantially in years to come.
Using chatbots as part of your marketing strategy can:
- Reduces your costs.
- Provides a new level of customer service to your audience.
- Increases traffic to your website.
Chatbots allow you to interact with potential and existing customers in a way that feels personal and retains the unique voice of your brand. They are especially popular with millennials – the fastest growing consumer group.
In-person interactions
For many years the overall trend in every type of business transaction has been away from the personal and towards the automated. Rather than going into a bank and dealing with a cashier face to face or calling up to arrange a funds transfer, all such activities can now be done online without speaking to another living being.
However, the indications are now that an increasing number of people want to go back to an era of in-person interaction. Linked at least to some degree to the increasing importance of experiences of possessions, as consumers are looking for a far more personal experience out of their interactions which means there are likely to be more and more:
- Live events.
- Pop-up shops.
- Live video streams.
All of the above and more will be fully utilized by the businesses of the future.
Building on blockchain
The blockchain may be best known for its role in keeping a permanent record of every bitcoin transaction that takes place. Information on the blockchain can be distributed but not copied and can, therefore, be used to record virtually anything of value. That is why blockchain in healthcare is gradually becoming a trend since safekeeping of medical data is important for the reputation of hospitals and healthcare providers
The greatest strengths of the blockchain are that it cannot be controlled by any single person or entity, that it is wholly transparent and that it is fantastically robust with no significant disruption since it was created more than a decade ago.
The blockchain is set to become of increasing importance to file storage, the protection of intellectual property, land title registration, stock trading and crowdfunding, to name but a few of the expected uses. Perhaps more than any other trend of emerging technology, it is one every business owner to investigate to see if they too can utilize its power.
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