Alin Niță, host of Forum IT, presents an interesting debate on online marketing trends. We are currently facing many situations generated by the pandemic, by tomorrow, by our current activities but it would be good to take the time to think about the trends we should adopt. We can think that artificial intelligence, search, SEO optimization, big data analytics and other aspects that in the past we might have considered science fiction, today have become current and a priority for business.

In this regard, in order to open this area of technology and trends in online marketing we have invited Mr Csaba Demeter. We will discuss together these trends in online marketing and how they influence user behaviour and business today.

We’re talking about technology and trends, which are constantly changing, moving fast and passing us by like lightning. The proposal is to go through the various trends we’ve identified and talk a little bit about how they can affect online marketing. Most of the time we are likely to focus on a few of the actions online marketing agencies that we already know, such as: google ads campaigns, SEO optimization but are they enough? Does the competition have other assets they rely on to grow?

Moderator AlinNita: I propose that we have a discussion about how innovative trends and technologies of the future, such as artificial intelligence, could help us?

Csaba Demeter: Artificial intelligence 10 or 20 years ago existed only in science fiction movies. Every year has certain trends, but this year the focus is on online marketing more, because certain marketing strategies due to the pandemic have certain limitations and their implementation may be more cumbersome or even impossible in some cases. There are studies on marketing budgets, a good part of which, almost 30-40% has been redirected, to social media, social media marketing. As such, trends are much more important and any entrepreneur or marketer needs to be aware of what new trends are emerging because buyer and customer behaviour has also changed and is changing radically. This is a normal, ongoing process that changes year after year, but customer behaviour has also changed because of the pandemic. Artificial intelligence is getting smarter and smarter and we will probably at some point get tied up about quantum computing, which is a huge computing power. Artificial intelligence is starting to help us do certain things faster or focus on more creative things and certain processes that are more time consuming and repetitive. Equally, artificial intelligence manages to calculate and optimise processes in real time, which for us humans would in some cases be quite impossible. I believe that artificial intelligence will become more and more prominent in our lives.

Moderator Alin Nita: Are we still talking about science fiction when we mention artificial intelligence or is it already adopted at a higher level?

Csaba Demeter: We already use it every day but we may not realize it. The moment you search for something on the internet, there are certain ads that appear more often, there is artificial intelligence behind it, which has analysed your search engine visitor profile and suggests certain ads and sites to you more than others. The artificial intelligence is already there.

Moderator AlinNita: So we have to think that it exists, you don’t buy artificial intelligence from the grocery store but you simply have to use it in various technologies or it is already used in technologies and think that it can help us quite a lot in optimizing and automating some of the things that we do anyway. Some people are clever and they apply it in technology, I was reading about Microsoft and Uber about those little robots that go around and look for car numbers, identify them, walk around parking lots to find all sorts of crimes that may exist. Things are going and will go pretty far down the road.

I would propose to go through the main trends although there are many. I have identified at a first search more than 20 trends that are specific to online marketing but certainly are also for other sectors. CelBots are bots and I’m curious what the stats say here, are CelBots being used because I’ve seen all sorts of systems and banking and financial?

Csaba Demeter: More and more those customer dialogue engines are being used, which can be 24/7, 7/7 or even 365/365. We are also using artificial intelligence on the back end, which is able to have some kind of discussion with our customer, with the user of the website, with most of the buyers of e-commerce websites so that it can answer the questions that the artificial intelligence has analysed, which are the most frequently asked questions. Does it make sense to hire someone to answer the same questions every time and give the same answers? No. Rather by analysing the big data you extract from it certain processes, certain dialogue flows that then operationalise and can even take a discussion through to final purchase. For example, in mobile telephony it is very difficult to talk to someone, there are different operators who ask you by voice and you answer by voice, it’s a kind of chat box except that it is voice.

Moderator Alin Nita: I saw a statistic last year that said that in 2020 over 85% of large organizations will adopt chat bots to interact with customers. Are we there yet?

Csaba Demeter: We are very close and there are all kinds of studies that show that digitization which was expected to reach a certain level in 2022-2023 , we are already there. The financial banking system has adopted digitisation very quickly and I understand much better how efficient this chat bot is. Equally also in e-commerce sites, certain parts of the customer supporting customers who have questions. There you can see that these dialogue engines are increasingly being used.

Moderator AlinNita: I’m curious what tools our viewers use for online marketing, what they trust and if it’s a plus for them compared to the competition. Really please, dear viewers, write us on the YouTube chat because we are curious to know what you use.

Another trend I’ve noticed is related to user behavior and how you personalize all the content that comes to the user: emails, information, texts. This way of personalisation, how exactly does it work based on the behaviour a user has?

Csaba Demeter: Based on the behaviour, we personalise the discussion, the dialogue, the communication with a customer or the beneficiary of the company’s services, but also from the data we have about each user of our products’ services. Personalization, like those newsletters that had a topic that we used to call promotion x, now we can personalize with “Alin, have you heard about our new promotion?” or “Alin, we’ve got another offer out and I know you’ve bought product x or y before” and then as a marketer you don’t use the same message for each person, you personalise. Obviously, you may think it’s hard to do this if you have dozens or thousands of customers. But this is where automation comes in, which will be another trend we’ll talk about. Artificial intelligence, cloud systems to save data, so from there you can personalize both the content but also when I communicate with you. For example, a program that specialises in sending mass mailings, after a few uses is able to tell when it’s best to send and to whom from your entire database of customers or recipients. You can also choose to let the platform choose for you when it’s best to send based on previous behaviour. This way, on the one hand you personalise the content and on the other hand you personalise the way and language of communication.

Moderator Alin Nita: In other shows we have detailed certain channels of promotion, of advertising going down to the level of detail, so that we can give as much information as possible to the viewers, so that they can know what to ask a provider of such services or maybe even start on their own. It is clear that for each trend there is a whole theory, how to do, how to ask the question, how to talk, how to address and there is work to do in developing each of these points.

Csaba Demeter: Of course, it’s also quite a challenge. We, even if we end up now talking about 10-20 trends, there are a lot of techniques, tasks and activities that a company can use in the arsenal of online marketing activities. A big challenge is which of these to choose and when, as both our budgets and time are limited, so it is advisable to look very clearly and in detail at the company’s objective, the resources available and the time horizon in which they want to achieve certain goals. Depending on this, the best options are chosen.

If you want to see the full show, you can play this video: