Lesson 2. Emerging Digital Technologies
As technology continues to advance, new digital technologies emerge, some of which could have relevance to digital entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs should keep abreast of emerging digital trends and consider whether the trend would work with the type of company and customers it has. Emerging trends include:
- Using augmented reality as a means for customers to ‘try-on’ products, such as sunglasses on the Ray-Ban website and using a smartphone to view how a piece of furniture would look in a room, as examples.
- An increase in the use of voice search.
- Visual search: Google Lens and Pinterest Lens turn a user’s smartphone camera into a search bar.
- Gamification: incorporating game features in a website, for example, spin the wheel to gain a discount.
- Interactive content on a website: surveys, quizzes, and competitions.
- Chatbots: to improve the shopping experience by allowing customers to ask questions and receive a prompt response.
- Shoppable posts: tagging images on Instagram of your products that allow customers to shop directly from the post.
- Influencer marketing: using people with large followings on Instagram for example to endorse your product.
- Personalised content: addressing an email to a customer’s name for example.
- Video marketing: works well to engage potential customers and helps them feel more confident about their purchase, as videos provide a better sense of scale and specifications than text and pictures can.
- Experiential marketing: active engagement, live, multi-sensory.
Watch this video clip to learn more about experiential marketing: Experiential marketing is the future of advertising | Layne Braunstein | TEDxFultonStreet – YouTube