Why the Unbreakable Connection between Tech and Marketing is Getting Stronger

The worlds of technology and marketing might not be directly related, but they’re certainly not mutually exclusive entities. In fact, without one the other would dwindle and die and that’s more accurate now than it’s ever been.

Indeed, as Carl Weinschenk, the Editorial Director of Smart Biz, pointed out in his article on the topic, there is a “growing tie between technology and marketing”. And with Google stating in 2015 that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries,” there’s now a clear connection between our phones and the marketing industry.

Smartphone Usage Giving Content a New Context

Today, there’s an estimated 2.6 billion smartphones on the market and, according to the 2015 Mobility Report from Ericsson, that figure will increase to 6.1 billion by 2020. What this means is that almost 1/3 of the world’s population is currently connected to a smartphone and by 2020 the vast majority of the globe will be able to access to the internet on the move.

Naturally this will mean an even busier marketplace through which marketers will be trying to get their voices heard. As cited by digital marketing agency Greenlight, there are currently “500 million tweets posted on Twitter each day” and even more comments via Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

In simple terms, the internet has been described as being like “an overcrowded sixth-form disco” and that means wallflower content, i.e. content that doesn’t standout, will get lost like the uncool kid in the corner.

How to be Heard Onlin

Of course, the natural question then becomes: how does an online marketer make their content standout? Greenlight’s report points to an article by James Deeley. Advocating that marketers go back to basics, perhaps Deeley’s most significant point was the need for content to have “meaning”.

As Google continues to place more influence on non-understandable (read: conversational) searches with the release of RankBrain, marketers are now being forced to create content that has more meaning to users in specific contexts.

Linking this with technology, the obvious answer for those wanting to make their content more relevant to a modern audience is to target smartphone users. As we’ve shown, the number of users is expected to grow markedly over the next few years and that means voice activated searches will become more significant.

According to Google, 55% of teens in the US now use voice activated mobile searches over traditional methods (i.e. typing) and that means the way in which marketers structure their SEO content will need to change.

Mobiles Mean Content Needs More Meaning

As Danielle Williams, head of SEO at Ripple Effect, pointed out, the arrival of voice searching means more queries coming in the form of questions of a “descriptive phrase”. Moreover, the interplay between words and semantics will also become increasingly important in the coming years.

Google is already using RankBrain to interpret non-standard phrases and to try to understand the inference of a sentence in the same way as a human would and that’s something marketers will need to take account of.

According to Williams, companies won’t be able to rely on data-drive keyword lists and will instead have to provide more answers to questions (i.e. more detailed content) if they want to avoid becoming a wall flower.

The connection between technology and marketing is one that’s been growing for the past few years and, as we move forward, it looks likely to continue.

The rise in smartphone usage, the need to avoid becoming a wall flower and the ability to provide meaningful content in a new way is all part of this tech/marketing relationship and something that will be interesting to see develop in the coming years.

Picture Credits:

1. https://pixabay.com/en/mockup-psd-ipad-iphone-white-654585/

2. https://pixabay.com/en/megaphone-shout-action-call-scream-50092/

3. https://pixabay.com/en/blogger-cellphone-office-business-336371/