2017 Predictions #7: Brand Loyalty Via #OmniSearch

To give you a jump start on the new year, we asked industry experts about their predictions for the future of location, marketing, and technology in 2017. We'll be posting their responses over the next month here on the Yext blog. Follow us on Twitter @Yext for new posts, and tweet at us with your own predictions.

By Nitin Dhamelia
Organic Search Best Practice Manager – Group, Belron International

Amazon, Apple, Google, Nest & O2 Home Services. All household names which, over the last 10 years, have percolated into the collective consciousness of a broad range of age demographics. And all of these brands have achieved this by introducing useful, network enabled, user-friendly technology that has slowly become woven into the fabric of the average home, particularly over the course of 2016.

Which means that 2017 is looking likely to be the year of consumers using networked technology, such as Google Home/Amazon Echo to #OmniSearch for goods and services featuring search results based on data from their existing network or "Personal Internet of Things". The Personal IoT effectively already contains a rich record of data of preferred/repeat physical & digital brand experiences all of which are continuously updated through informational, navigational & transactional intent reference data based on the consumer's daily search, interaction & location activity. Devices like Google Home will bring all of those physical and/or digital brand experiences together to form a Personal Brand Ecosystem, specific to that consumer.

I believe that for a brand to successfully gain entry into this Personal Brand Ecosystem, consistent physical (where possible) & digital location context validation will be key components of a networked, multi-modal multi-device search strategy in 2017. That is to say that search in many B2C verticals will become a blend of succeeding in brand ToV, digital omnipresence, regular/natural language content optimisation and real world store traffic.

Marketing isn't changing – it's already changed in that your new marketers are also your consumers. Make it easy for your consumer to find you, whenever they need you and their Personal IoT will keep your brand top of mind.

This post is part of a series of 2017 predictions from industry experts.