Marketers that use technology and innovation strengthen their brands and outgrow the competition.

To create awareness and subsequently establish relationships with customers is now at the core of any marketing strategy or campaign. To have a successful campaign it is eminent that just broadcasting the message is very expensive and therefore ineffective compared to modern competitors. Successful campaigning today is based on reference. The Holy Grail for modern marketers is the very moment customers start to refer a campaign to their peers. This means a full emphasis on the campaign’s overall “cool factor”, its original and exciting uses of technology, and its status as “first to do something”. These are increasingly becoming primary campaign goals for large brands. Modern marketers do know that technology can build brands much faster and cheaper than advertising.

There are many reasons for this shift; chief among them is that marketers are recognizing that innovation has a trickle-down effect on consumer loyalty and engagement, thanks to the way technology is sculpting consumer-brand interaction. This movement has given birth to a trend brand marketers are calling “technovation,” which is basically the intersection of technology, innovation and the creative, free thinking that brings them together. Technovation as a marketing tactic can complement, and sometimes even replace, more traditional creative mediums like print and TV advertising. And because it is, by its very nature, leading edge and original, technovation strengthens brands’ relationships with their customers, who now view them as fresh and trendsetting, no matter how long they’ve been around.

Here are three strategies for brands:

1. Use existing technology in unexpected ways.

Brands don’t always need to build something from the ground up to be innovative. Sometimes it’s enough for a brand to use existing technology in novel ways to demonstrate that it’s fresh and forward thinking. This is an especially effective tactic for large brands that want to demonstrate their enterprising spirit.

2. Introduce entirely new technology.

Brands that prioritize technovation-based marketing strategies see this as an invitation to build the solutions they need from scratch. Many times this takes place on the vendor side, but every now and then you see new technology coming directly from the brand.

3. Make brandtechnovation campaignable

Being the first to do something does not mean that there’s no existing structure built to support it. There are lots of KPIs that can measure the success of technovation-inspired campaigns. We’re already seeing this as the world goes digital; indicators such as awareness, earned exposure and engagement rate are the most representative of this new wave of analytics. What these metrics track is the additional time spent engaging in a digital dialogue with a brand and how that additional interaction will affect the consumer’s actions in the future. These metrics keep track of how people are interacting with and sharing content within all types of networks.

The brands that are on the leading edge of technovation will find that they are perceived as younger, more successful and more attractive than their competitors. So why wait, there are thousands of innovative new technologies out there. The key is to find one that is the perfect match with your brand.