The Future of Marketing and Sales

Last February I visited the Traffic & Conversion Summit in San Diego. This is the go-to event when it comes to online marketing and sales. Major speakers such as Daymond John and Robert Cialdini explained the future of online marketing. It became clear to me again that Americans are really a few steps ahead of us Europeans. In this post I share my highlights with you.

The era of chatbots

In many of the sessions I visited, chatbots were a hot topic. With the help of pre-programmed dialogues, chatbots are becoming more and more human, making them more capable of having a conversation with potential customers. Many companies already use them on their customer service or Facebook, for example. Prospects can go to a chatbot, which then starts the conversation. A person can take over the conversation at any time, for example if it appears that they are interested in your product. 

It is expected that 95% of all customer interactions in 2025 will be supported by chatbots.

Drift.com is a perfect example of a company that is fully committed to this technology. You can easily purchase a chatbot for your own website here, with which you can respond quickly and 24/7 to questions from your leads.

My vision? I think chatbots are extremely suitable in a lot of situations and can support sales. But in the field of sales (especially high-end sales), nothing beats personal, human contact.

LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook and voice commerce

The major influence of the platforms LinkedIn, Facebook and WhatsApp was also a hot topic during the event. LinkedIn Advertising is growing very fast, for example, and it gives you many advertising opportunities, especially in the B2B market. There are very few agencies in the Netherlands that specialize in this, so I still see many possibilities.

In addition, Facebook and WhatsApp will be integrated further . More and more ads on Facebook are provided with a "send message" button, with which you can directly ask a company a question via WhatsApp. This way you quickly move towards building a 1-on-1 relationship with your customers.

Amazon's Echo and Google’s Home are extremely popular in America. More and more people use these smart speakers to listen to the news in the morning or to go through your agenda. These devices also have major consequences for local search engine marketing, since the speaker only shares 1 result with you. The coveted first place in the search results will therefore become even more important. A great challenge for all SEO specialists.

The success of Amazon Prime

What I found incredibly interesting to hear is the success of Amazon Prime. This is a paid variant of Amazon, which means that you no longer have to pay shipping costs. Turns out the conversion is huge! The normal conversion on Amazon is around 24%, for Amazon Prime that is 74%. The involvement appears to be much greater and people order even easier via Amazon. These types of models are also very interesting for the Dutch market.

Next year again!

I have already booked my ticket for next year, are you coming? We are going in that direction with a group from the Netherlands, it would be nice if you were there. You learn so much in a few days at the Traffic & Conversion Summit that you can grow for at least a year!

Want to join? Let me know: [email protected]

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