Reference no: EM132233315

Read each discussion and comment. should be 100 and plus words

1. Damien Ryan identifies different factors that are important for the Future of Digital Marketing and I would say the most important are trust and personalization. The fundamentals of digital marketing relies on build trusting relationships with consumers. “The power of trust has a permanent position in the future of digital marketing, particularly the trust generated through micro-review websites. The digital marketers of tomorrow will extract important information from the social web about consumers – especially their interests and personal recommendations. Marketers will then use this information to help consumers discover products in real-time.” (Linx) By building trust, it allows consumers to have peace of mind in the company and the products they’re buying. Consumers need to know that their data is in good hands. With consumers building trust, it’ll then spread by word of mouth that trust is placed there. Personalization used to be just employees knowing your name when you go to a store. But, now with the digital marketing on the rise, personalization has changed to where companies know what you want to buy before you’ve thought about it. When an experience is personalized, the consumers feel connected to the message. “When we personalize something, we are helping an audience to have a richer experience with content or information that they have shown a preference for, while also selecting what kind of content they might interact with in the future. At the heart of all marketing management lies the desire to present the best possible information in the most attractive way, at the right time.” (Shepherd) I know for me that I feel understood when a message is more personalized towards my needs or wants. For example, if I made purchases online, I would be sent emails with other items that I would possibly be interested in just based off my past purchases. Usually, it’s clothes that would fit my style. Digital marketing is now more about creating experiences and building trust with consumers. With consumers spending more time online and on their mobiles, digital marketing is a tool that can be very beneficial to companies when used properly.

2. In our world today, as we become more knowledgeable about our privacy, it has become a very important concept for us. In fact, according to Security Magazine, 9 in 10 Americans say that their privacy is “very important” to them. Another interesting statistic is that over half of Americans that own devices such as Alexa and Google Home say that they are worried about what information is being collected on them (“Americans Say”, 2017). Overall, our world is becoming increasingly skeptical and more aware of the ideal of privacy. That is why I believe that trust will be the commercial advantage and future of digital marketing. Businesses, in order to survive, will have to invest in efforts on how to correctly engage with customers and how to effectively understand their preferences ("Understanding Digital Marketing").

As Bobby Duffy states in our textbook, “trust in the ordinary man or woman in the street is at the highest level we’ve ever recorded. All generations have increased their level of trust – which is encouraging and important”. While this information is referring to trust in politicians, the author of our book predicts that this will be a growing area for businesses to focus on in the future. In the future, for a brand to be successful they will not only have to gain their customers trust in regards to quality of the product but more importantly how they're handling their private information. According to an article posted by HBR.org, there have been many companies that have lost the trust of their consumers costumers, and therefore their business over the years. As generations become less and less brand loyal, marketers need some way of retaining consumers. Trust is the first step.

I agree with Vanessa and Annalie that personalization is one of the most important items on Damien Ryan’s list. With advancements in technology and experiential retailing, customers are constantly evolving in regards to preferences. The consumer expectation will never stop growing and the future of digital marketing it learning how to adapt to that. According to an article posted by Evergage, consumers want companies to engage with them and provide them with the right content, products, promotions, and messages (Sweet, 2018).

When researching about the future of digital marketing, I came across information about The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Starting May 2018, companies in the European Union will have very strict restrictions on how they collect data. I read that this is going to also cause changes to US marketers/companies as well. According to Reid Bryant, VP of analytics and data science at Brook Bell, the positive to this new practice is that companies will have to put a lot more thought into data collection and analytics (Sweet, 2018). This will allow for personalization to be more effective while also protecting the public's rights to data privacy. I thought this was an interesting integration of “Trust” and “Personalization”.