So picture this - you're a marketer or franchisee of a retail store, convenience store, restaurant, coffee shop - whatever. The bottom line is you're target audience persona is ON THE GO.

You need a way to reach this target audience as they're ready to make purchasing decisions. How do you get your brand to be front and center?

Regardless of whether or not you've tried Facebook Ads, Instagram Content, WAZE, Google Adwords Express or Email Marketing (they all work when done correctly, by the way), what's next is this...

The data shows that in the next three years, your audience will be driving and holding two-way conversations with a voice activated device in their cars, similar to the Echo Device that hosts Amazon's Alexa AI technology.

Alexa offers "Skills" that are just like Apps that businesses can build. Wait, WHAT IS AN ALEXA SKILL? Read this for more.

You, as a marketer, need to take a look at hiring a developer to build your business an Alexa Skill that can notify your audience of special deals near them as they drive closer (or farther away) from your business location offering the special deal.

This is frictionless compared to the current process of the user having to open their phone and type something into a device while driving, or tapping an app several times to get the information "en route."

You, as the chief marketer for "Brand X" need to think about the fact that technology NOW can be built that enables your brand to initiate a conversation with someone driving, and send them information based on data points from one of your retail locations.

This, along with dynamic podcast ad placements, is the present and the future of digital marketing.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

Paul Hickey, Founder / CEO / Lead Strategist at Data Driven Design, LLC has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.