Marketing and IT: Can We Be More Than Just Friends?

Marketing and IT now go hand in hand. Most marketers are very online-centric because the Internet is the resting place for most sales. There are still stores open around the world, but the 2020 pandemic highlighted to the world that living online life is far easier than we thought. Marketing and IT go together very well when it comes to the Internet, but are there other ways that IT and technology may help you make a sale?

Digital signs

You can use TVs around your business premises if you wish, or you can buy digital signs that are easier to mount on walls, and that may go outside. Running digital signs is pretty easy these days. You can run advertisements on them; you can show demonstrations of your services; you can even direct people around your store.

You can schedule items to appear, you can link the content with stock levels, and you can live feed information to your customers or your staff. Check out some of the brilliant things that other people have done with their digital signs by checking out a digital signage blog or two.

Smartphone apps

Some companies make an app as a companion to their website. Others make standalone apps, and others make shopping apps. You can create them for Smartphones that pair well with Smartphone technology.

For example, you may have the app tell people when one of your stores is nearby, utilising the Geolocation information on the phone. There are several ways you can integrate payment methods into your app that pair well with the wireless/internet/Bluetooth methods used by phones.

Projectors on walls

There are several ways this may be done. There have been controversial images shot onto government buildings because of powerful projectors, but your marketing need not be so aggressive.

You can shoot your projected images and videos up against a white wall inside or outside your building if you wish. You can project into public areas, and you can even project onto your building to change its colour or appearance if you wish.

Drones

Popularised by Chinese displays, we now know it is possible to display massive signs in the sky. You can have drones set themselves out so that they spell words and create sentences or your company what the Chinese did during sporting events and make the drones create images.

By having drones moving and coordinated correctly, you can create the illusion of moving parts (as if the watchers saw a video). This is obviously a very expensive and difficult way of promoting something, but it has now been done often enough to prove it is a viable marketing tool.

The TV, radio and podcasts

Good old fashioned TVs and radios are still in use, they are still technology, and they are still viable ways to promote things. The radio still has more power than many Millennials think because people still listen to the radio in their cars. People are driving to work, to recreation, to see family, and they are listening to radios.

On a similar note, downloadable podcasts are also popular, and advertisers are all over them at the moment. Podcasts can be stored on devices for later consumption, which means your ads may be played repeatedly because they are often spoken aloud by the person doing the podcast, which makes them mostly unskippable.

Neon and LED lights

There are numerous examples online of how people have used neon and LED lights to great effect. From your traditional outdoor sign to fancy LED light setups that make two-dimensional images look like three-dimensional images, you can use lights for marketing your products and services. They may not be high tech, but how effective they are is only limited by your imagination.

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Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, why not check out the following posts on digital marketing.

• Powerful Tips to Enhance Your Companies Brand Identity
• 10 Ways To Generate Offline Leads For Your Website
• Innovative and Budget-Friendly Brand Awareness Campaign Ideas

Tags: Marketing, Digital Marketing, Guest Post