DIGITAL TRENDS: Digital brand marketing & advertising!

The quality of any product or service does not guarantee the brand’s success. For a great brand to thrive there must be lots of other factors.

The old saying that great products sell themselves does not hold water anymore. Even the most popular brands in the digital economy era, promote heavily their products and services hence automatically building their brand awareness.

You can only do guess work whether Apple or Amazon would be among the three world’s most valuable brands if they didn’t invest all their resources in brand marketing.

Moreover, with a marketing strategy aiming at making a brand occupy a distinct position, relative to other competing brands in the minds of consumers.

It has been said that positioning is an attempt for a brand to distinguish itself from its competitors. Moreover, anything that is reflected in a company’s identity is what branding is.

The digital economy, brought a difference in branding with a three-dimensional affair just like the three sides of the same coin.

The third side of a coin; an edge is never realised just like branding has become much more sophisticated and intangible than ever before. Companies that aren’t innovative enough have found themselves competing in an oversaturated market.

With the emerging technological changes, the rise of advertising tools, and the proliferation of social media, digital marketing trends have become unpredictable.

When we talk of new digital cultural values, it implies that everything a brand represents, as well as it encompasses its products, services, purpose, goals, shared vision and any other useful invention to attract customers.

Today, digital advertising is ubiquitous.; whether on the screen or on the street, advertisements are always trying to persuade us to buy the newest must-have product.

But, in recent years, marketers and advertisers have completely changed their approach, and what was once the art of persuasion has transformed into something resembling pure science.Indeed, over the last few decades, the marketing and advertising industry have changed drastically.

The way advertising agencies make money, how consumers view advertisements, and how clients measure the success of advertising campaigns; each has been utterly revolutionized by technology and big data. And these new forces are only getting stronger.

Until few decades ago, the main mediums of advertising were television and radio, as well as print media like newspapers. But things have changed rapidly in the last decade as smartphones have taken over.

Mobile smartphones offer awesome potential for advertisers. They’re used by more than five billion people worldwide, and their capabilities are increasing all the time. It is said that, a single iPhone 8 possesses a greater amount of computing power than the world’s first space shuttle. Indeed, smartphones are so powerful that they enable advertisers to track and interact with users in real time.

The media agencies are good in analsing massive amounts of big data, then divide it into much smaller audience segments.

Thereafter, each small segment receives a customized advertising initiative campaign, designed by the media company itself.

Big data has already undermined the role of traditional creative agencies and profited the media agencies heavily.

The rise of the internet, has created a better business model which delivers impactful business outcome resulting from big changes in advertising and marketing industries.

Mr Swai is the content director for MibiAd Africa Tanzania Ltd