Innovation should characterize the everyday life of a start-up, especially in the areas that the company makes public — The Marketing or Online Marketing — to become successful. Everything must be well thought out, tried out, and implemented.
This doesn’t mean that the “well-thought-out”-concept will automatically work though.

This article is about a revolution in the marketing industry, caused by innovative technologies that have shaped this process over the years. A revolution in which only the best of the best can make it to the top. Companies that are not only well versed in the market, but much more so those that are constantly dealing with it and not only observe the change, but participate in it, if not even trigger and shape it. You can also look forward to seeing the market’s latest investments in innovative start-ups.

Current Status

The term “marketing” covers a range of strategies and corporate activities aimed at making a brand, product, or service palatable to the targeted markets. These include branding measures, target group analyses, price management, and advertising. While the production department in a company is responsible for the production of the actual product, marketing includes all measures that are intended to present this product to the customer and persuade him to buy it. (Olaf Kopp, 2020)

“If the product is good, there is no need for marketing!” (anonym)

Marketing as we know it today only developed towards the end of the 19th century: Whereas before that, we were still dealing with classic seller’s markets where many potential customers had to choose from a comparatively small range of products, machine-supported mass production quickly established a buyer’s market where a constantly growing number of manufacturers with similar products compete for a constantly smaller number of potential customers.
In the modern buyer’s market, in most industries, the focus is no longer on the customer buying, but on the customer buying their own products instead of competing products. Marketing can be used for various business objectives. Therefore it is important to define the goals correctly before developing a marketing strategy. Marketing can be used for branding and direct sales. (Olaf Kopp, 2020)

Sales marketing has primarily economic goals in focus such as:

Sales
Turnover
Contribution margin
Profitability
Market share
Profit
Price level
Distribution level

Branding or brand development focuses more on psychological goals:

Awareness level
Image
Customer satisfaction
Customer loyalty
Brand loyalty
Purchase intensity
Level of competence
Buyer penetration

How market-strategies can lead to success

Market research, taking market-oriented advertising measures, offering exactly what the target group is interested in or demands. In addition, having a feeling for new innovation coming up and an eye for aesthetics can definitely be an advantage!

The principles of marketing so far—Keyword: the “classic marketing mix”

Marketing activities are rather limited nowadays. This is mainly due to the much more complex market situation today, with hundreds of internationally and regionally competing suppliers, which requires a much greater differentiation of products and marketing measures. In order to recognize what measures can be taken for such differentiation in the first place, it helps to look at the marketing mix.

This summarises all marketing activities or marketing areas and classically consists of the so-called “4 P’s”:

Product (product policy)
Price (pricing policy)
Promotion (communication policy)
Place (distribution policy)

At this point, it also becomes clear how comprehensive the tools of marketing are. Here it becomes clear that marketing and advertising are not the same. Advertising is only one of many possible marketing activities. It is typically a measure within a comprehensive marketing strategy. (Olaf Kopp, 2020)

The Future of Marketing

Forget the 4 P’s, welcome the 4 E’s! (Natalia Chrzanowska)

Engagement
Experience
Exclusivity
Emotion

“Digital world is evolving at an extremely quick pace and if you don’t follow you will just lose. (…) Let’s face the truth. People don’t buy products anymore. They buy experiences and emotions instead. You should change your “what should I sell” or “how should I sell” into “WHY should I sell it?”. Emotional branding is what makes a business stand out.” (Natalia Chrzanowska)

It’s all about what the product embodies. Whether you can identify with it and above all: whether you would buy it yourself. Every brand can be replaced. Become one that is not. Whose existence enriches everyone and whose disappearance is called a loss. You have to manage to create an emotional connection to the customer with a sophisticated marketing strategy — Coca Cola, for example — Commercials, especially at Christmas time … a) are fun, b) bring joy, c) arouse emotions d) spread Christmas spirit, and e) promote the subconscious desire to drink a Coca Cola. How amazing!
The aspect that a bottle of coke contains vast amounts of sugar or sweeteners and is not particularly beneficial to health is absolutely losing focus. The relevance of the product: refreshment, pleasure, and enjoyment.

The different phases of technology marketing

Every innovation experiences a ‘technological trigger’ which is the start of a project or the moment when a certain professional audience pays attention to the technological novelty. (D. Demir, C. Hammerl, C. Papke)
Phase 1 a breakthrough
Phase 2 defined as the “peak of exaggerated expectations”
Here, many interested parties usually expect more from a technical innovation than they can actually provide.
Phase 3 called the “Valley of disappointments”
The majority of those involved notice that reality often looks different than expected. This is where reporting on technology has reached its lowest point.
Phase 4 the “Path of Enlightenment”
The respective technology will be re-rolled through realistic assessments and practical implementation. At the end of this phase, the so-called ‘productivity plateau’ is reached. From now on the technology is profitable, it is becoming more and more recognized, more solid, and is already in the second to the third stage of development.

First new developments | Which technologies are coming up?

Some of the top marketing trends for 2020: (Christian Thomson, 2019)

Shoppable Posts
This represents an immense opportunity for businesses, given that 72% of Instagram users have purchased a product on the app. A survey of more than 4,000 Pinterest users found that 70% use Pinterest to find new and interesting products, which is even more impressive. “Social media offers you the ability to reach new customers quickly and easily, shortening the sales funnel and making it easier for users to shop. By 2020, shoppable posts are expected to be the norm.”

Virtual And Augmented Reality
“In recent years, both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have become massively popular and are emerging as top trends in marketing. In 2020, AR is expected to surpass VR in popularity, despite VR’s early lead.”
Large companies like IKEA already use innovative technologies such as AR. They have an app that allows customers to project furniture and objects in their own homes before they buy them to get a better feeling if these objects actually do fit in their house or apartment.

Interactive Content
Today’s shoppers are looking for new experiences when they go online, and for many, this means greater interactivity. In fact, 91% are looking for more visual and interactive content.

Personalization
In a survey of almost 1,000 people, 90% of them said that personalization was attractive to them. More importantly, 80% said they would be more likely to hand over their business to a company that offered them a personalized experience.

“Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with your audience in a meaningful way.” (Christian Thomson, 2019)

Google Ads Smart Bidding
Google Ads uses machine learning to optimize your bids. This gives you several new skills that will help you maximize your conversion.

Content Marketing
“Content is King”—it continues to be true.

Video Content
Do not overlook live video. On average, live videos on Facebook Live and Instagram Live will keep your audience three times longer than a recorded video. Daily playback time for Facebook Live videos has quadrupled in a year and they produce six times as much interaction as traditional videos.

SERP Position Zero
“Being No. 1 is no longer the goal.”
The top spot in SERP is now position zero, a section of text that is displayed above the search results. This prime location often contains information about the search query and a link to the page from which the information originated.

Innovative Technologies: Virtual Reality

Based on the 4 E’s, new innovative technologies just like virtual reality (VR), like the word as itself implies, creates a fictional feeling of a whole different dimension and works exactly the way the 4 E’s are working. The usage of this software creates an experience as researchers would say. With the help of VR, problems can be presented in another dimension, analyzed more easily, and thus processed or solved in a targeted manner, e.g. in the form of therapy. In medicine or architecture, it is especially helpful to get a better idea of what a certain body region or building looks like and how to proceed to perform an operation or how to perfect the framework of a building. You are therefore working virtually on a “project” on which it would be impossible to work in reality. A forecast is made, an idea is visualized and staged. It is based on theories and hypotheses. (Omnia360, 2017)

How could such a system enrich the start-up world?

Start-ups have more and more chances to establish themselves on the market. If they are alert, committed, and always up to date and beyond, their future will be glorious. Of course, this presupposes that they have a well-thought-out marketing strategy and a vision of where they want to position themselves in the future and what goal they are pursuing, on top. The combination is the key.

The latest major investments in Start-ups offering marketing solutions

The markets largest Investments in innovative start-ups in 2020 (CrunchBase, 2020)

- AppsFyler | Series D | $ 210 M | 2020
- Yotpo | Series E | $ 75 M | 2020
- Music World Media | Series B | $ 55.9 M | 2020

AppsFlyer offers “four pillars”:
accurate data, unmatched privacy and security, open tech-stack innovation, and an unbiased, customer-obsessed approach —> “have allowed us to grow into the global attribution leader” (AppsFlyer.com)

AppsFlyer works with over 12 K customers among their ecosystem of over 6 K technology partners.

Funds raised: $ 294 M
Annual ad spend measured: $ 28 B+
Tech partner integrations: 6 K+
Active Mobile Apps: 89 K

Yotpo is an eCommerce marketing platform, which offers the most advanced solutions for customer reviews, visual marketing, loyalty, referrals, and SMS marketing.

Yotpo supports the world’s fastest growing brands like GoPro, MVMT, Pura Vida and many more. They are helping brands leverage customer reviews and photos throughout the buying process to increase trust, social evidence and sales. With Yotpo, companies can collect and use any type of user-generated content to build a stronger brand and better customer experience. The reliability and innovation behind this concept has already granted the business more than $ 170 M since inception, with more than $70 M collected only in 2020.

Music World Media (MWM) calls itself »The world’s leading creative apps publisher«.
Their vision: Creativity for all
Through various and complementary apps, they offer to everyone the means to express their imagination. MWM is known to be a French Tech champion, supported by the key actors of the Tech sector.

Within the last 6 years, MWM has developed more than 15 apps covering all the main Creation segments including Music Production, Music Learning, Gaming or Utilities.
The start-up has reached 400 M Downloads and #1 creative apps publisher worldwide. The results are self-explanatory for this company’s success which is furtherly supported by investors willingness to commit more than $50 M in 2020 to help this startup to grow even more.

Reference to GründerAtelier

Our company, like most start-ups, defines itself through innovation. We always try to be up to date. But much more: We want to be ahead of others, ahead of the market. We also support our start-ups in setting up promising marketing strategies.Therefore, we must constantly develop ourselves and not only solve problems, but also create and analyze them and learn more and more approaches, which in turn can be used to develop new solutions.

Only then, i.e. after this selection, we’ll find out what we ourselves as a company can still improve and how we have to work faster and more efficiently in order to keep up with the leaders and reach the top.

Vision

A clear vision of what the future of the marketing industry will look like can be easily established. There will be more and more start-ups, clever minds, new ideas, and above all, more and more new technologies. But only the very best of the best will be able to prove themselves. This selection will ultimately show which qualities are relevant to the market, offer clear added value, and, above all, what scope or reach we are talking about. In this case, reach implies the popularity of the product or technology.

What could still change and be improved?

Everything changes at a speed that not everyone can keep up with. That is how marketing works, how the whole world works. — Survival of the fittest.
Attention, engagement, and presence are the key to success.

Resume

While many business owners appreciate the fact that marketing is changing ever faster, those who are willing to adapt and evolve will continue to attract high-quality customers in a digital world.

Reference

Olaf Klopp. (2020). Marketing einfach erklärt: Definition, Übersicht & FAQ. Retrieved from:
https:// www.sem-deutschland.de/inbound-marketing-agentur/online-marketing-glossar/was-ist-marketing/

Dila Demir, Christopher Hammerl, Christina Papke. (unknown) Technologie Marketing im Studiengang TMM. Retrieved from:
https://www.technologiemarketing.org/technologiemarketing/welche-technologien-die-das-marketing-stark-beeinflussen-werden-in-zukunft-große-rolle-spielen/

Bojana Trajkovska. (2018). Berlin’s startup ecosystem at a glance. Retrieved from: https://www.eu-startups.com/2018/12/berlins-startup-ecosystem-at-a-glance/

Natalia Chrzanowska. (unknown). 9 Thoughts about the future of Marketing. Retrieved from: https://brand24.com/blog/the-future-of-marketing/

Omnia360. (2017). Was ist Virtuelle Realität. Retrieved from: https://omnia360.de/blog/was-ist-virtual-reality/

Christian Thomson. (2019). Top Marketing Trends For 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/10/03/top-marketing-trends-for-2020/

CrunchBase. (2020). Retrieved from: https://www.crunchbase.com

The Future of Marketing—Through Innovation to the Top

Introduction—Innovative Marketing