How the Role of the Marketer is Simplified with Web 3.0

We’ve all been hearing about Web 3.0 for some time now — with the consensus being that it is going to be a revolutionary step in the internet’s life. The signs of this third-generation of WWW are already here — what with the Internet of Things and smart home appliances. But what will it mean for marketing? Well, I personally believe it’s going to massively simplify the role of the marketer, pushing us eager undergrads currently studying to need to further diversify our talents and offerings to achieve the maximum number of clients we can.

Firstly, Web 3.0 is defined for the following five characteristics

• Connectivity everywhere
• 3D graphics & experiences
• Semantic web technologies
• Artificial intelligence being used for marketers
• Open technologies

Semantic web technologies

The semantic web basically means making human read content easier to find, through machine-readable data improving and making headway. Robots understanding semantics, and context. That’s the gist of it. Yet, something so simple will make the marketer’s overall job that much easier.

Rather than having to focus so heavily on keywords, phrases, and synonyms to ensure that Google understands exactly what the post is about; (what if I want a funny, anecdotal intro that DOESN’T include my keywords, Google?!) the marketer/ writer can instead focus on actually useful, and interesting content about the topic the consumer is looking for.

Productivity is something that every digital marketer knows they need to maximize the potential of, and certain changes the semantic web will make will allow less ‘noise’ in the digital marketer’s overall process of building and maintaining content. The removal of microtasks = more time to focus on cornerstone content and consumer communications.

Artificial Intelligence

Don’t worry — Skynet doesn’t want to take over, it wants to help your business! Artificial intelligence has been seeing vast improvements over the past two decades, and we’ve reached a point where it’s leading the charge in many marketing aspects as outlined by Emarsys.

Sales forecasting through the use of big data, machine learning, powerful solutions for example. AI reading the analysis, keyword data, and consumer’s social media posts and general behavior online in order to offer insights into consumers. What they want, what they think of products/ brands, what they’ve enjoyed in the past. The whole process of getting to know the consumer becomes easier with AI and allows the marketer to have a great idea on how to approach a consumer. Knowing what the consumer wants serves to eliminate some of the questions marketers need to find answers to, allowing them to hone in on and offer a more refined relationship.

Ubiquitous Connectivity

A term that sounds exciting — and that’s because it is! The idea of Web 3.0 featuring connectivity everywhere switched from a vision to an actuality when the Internet of Things started. Wireless appliances that can create and send data to their owner. With Amazon Prime Air, this is set to become even more integrated.

Fridges alerting you when they’re empty, and giving you options to ‘re-buy a weekly shop’, which then it sends off to Amazon or some other big-time company to begin using drones who then delivers it with their AI.

3D Graphics and Experiences

3D graphics and VR has also made huge headway in the past few years, and it’s changed the game for many industries, set to become even better throughout the 2020s.

Museum guides, house viewings, nature resorts can all be viewed using VR and 3D graphics, something that these industries have been utilizing more and more lately. Especially with lockdown, virtual house viewings have become something of the norm. While that may exist currently as private landlords giving a potential tenant a video call of them walking around the property showing them the different rooms, this is bound to become more refined in the future.

Travel agents, museum workers, landlords, pretty much all your tour operator type jobs will have a much easier time enticing consumers online via these 3D methods. Again this frees up time — if the customer doesn’t like the look of a property, travel destination or museum offering, they can let the tour operator know much quicker than when they actually have to turn up and go through the process only to say they’re not interested afterward.

With travel destinations particularly, I believe this could be a fantastic way for disabled or vulnerable over 65s to be given a service where they can virtually visit travel destinations for a much lower price than actually going. It doesn’t have to be that age range but that’s whom I feel would benefit from it, especially during a time in our history where those that normally venture off on cruise ships and holidays are being told to stay indoors for three months. VR has the potential to offer a lot of people a reprieve from the same four walls of their home

Open Technology

I wasn’t completely concrete on what this meant prior to writing this post, so I did a little research and it’s actually quite fascinating — and relevant!

Open technology, as explained by Kenneth Chapman, means “enabling customers to have flexibility, and the knowledge and confidence to make future-proof technology investments, and the ability to extend and enhance software to meet their needs”. Open source for instance, is an example of open technology though this is not synonymous.

Using APIs, which in layman’s terms means giving as much programmatic data as possible to other developers who buy/ use the software to be able to make their own adjustments as necessary to that software. Again, I’m not an expert so don’t quote me on this, but I’d say GitHub is an example of this (in which many software developers of different kinds can collaborate on projects together with a project management system installed on the interface for communication purposes) or at least the spirit behind a web that’s heavily focused on open technology.

What Does This Mean for Marketers?

In summary, these features of Web 3.0 are going to simplify our roles, while also encouraging us to look into diversifying our abilities and skills so that we remain relevant within the digital marketing industry in a broad sense and can actually still score clients.

While consumer behavior and insight reports will be handled for us, and the technology can perform some of the more microtask elements of content creation and marketing as a whole, the human element is something we will always have. Connection, understanding consumer’s needs, and communicating with them to establish this is a strength that Web 3.0 is not going to take away from us.

With a lot of the research and analysis side of marketing being handled by AI, this is something I would advise digital marketers to treat as less of a priority in the future while still knowing the basics ins-and-outs behind competitive analysis and research. Graphic and logo design, website design, content writing, copywriting, social media marketing will continue to be very important skills that marketers should try to get at least adept in all aspects for the maximum chance of success.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Web 3.0 characterizes itself with a more intelligent, helpful, and responsive worldwide web, and this is going to simplify the role of the marketer while also pushing them to diversify their abilities and skills in order to stay relevant to future clients.