Today, the internet has evolved far beyond what its creators likely ever imagined, with its outsize impact on every sphere of life on earth, from how we socialize to how the world’s economy is run. Let’s take a look at three new developments that are shaping the future of the internet: Web 3.0, NFTs and the metaverse.

Start telling your story early, and share lots of information as construction proceeds Launching a new initiative such as a new hospital facility or clinic requires a proactive communications approach in order to make the initiative a success from day one. Here are some suggestions for how to communicate to all your audiences over the lifetime of the project, from the initial planning stages through to your opening events.

If you want your stakeholders to listen, you have to prove that your messages have value The perception that key stakeholders like referring physicians and patients have about your hospital is crucial. If it’s good, your stakeholders want to serve or be served by your hospital. On the other hand, if people hold a negative perception about your hospital, it can have an impact on everything from staff retention to patient volumes. A differentiated positioning sharpens the perception of the value of a hospital, increasing its attractiveness in the eyes of all audiences. So how can you boost the perception of your hospital? To answer this question, there are two key areas to explore: How can you develop a relationship with your target groups that is based on trust? And how can you become a reliable partner that people listen to?

During the first lockdown, we looked forward to a quick return to normal. Now, the world has changed, and it seems we’re not going back to normal any time soon. Research shows that 75% of the population is still reluctant to engage in activities where contact with others is difficult to avoid – such as going in to the office, taking public transport, flights, carpooling, etc. Economists have introduced the term “crib economy,” meaning a lifestyle where we now all stay close to home.

When you make your service orientation clear, everyone knows what to expect from your organization In the competitive hospital world, it’s important that all of your stakeholders – employees, patients, referring physicians, suppliers and others – know what your hospital stands for. Whether your service concept is ‘patient intimacy,’ ‘operational excellence’ or to be a ‘competence center of excellence,’ for example, all of your communications and activities must reinforce and support it.

Multinationals like Microsoft, Coke or Nike have big budgets, and they can afford to include neuromarketing – using sophisticated tools that measure brain activity and physiological responses – in their market research programs. But the technology and expertise used in neuromarketing is costly. What if you’re a small- to mid-sized company, with a small- to mid-sized marketing budget?

As marketers, we want to learn all we can about our prospects and customers – who they are and what motivates them – so we can develop solutions and marketing approaches that will really engage them. We hold focus groups, develop buyer personas, conduct surveys, and track anecdotal reports from sales … all to find out what the hot buttons are, what prospects feel most strongly about, and to discover the best ways to persuade them.

Some updates to Google’s algorithm have a bigger impact than others. With the rollout of BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) in 2019, Google’s algorithms went from simply understanding words to being able to understand the context that the words were in. For example, think about how the meaning of the word “bank” differs in these sentences: I am going to the bank. / I am standing on the bank of the river. Thanks to the BERT algorithm, Google recognizes these nuances, and is able to provide search results that more closely align with the subject being searched for, providing the searcher with information that is more relevant.

According to the experts at Marketo, marketers can expect to see a significant shift in marketing priorities over the next couple of years. The marketing automation company surveyed over 700 marketing execs and CEOs for their views on how marketing KPIs, required skillsets and technology tools will change by the year 2025. The surveyed marketers ranked customer retention, lead generation and customer lifetime value as their top three KPIs today (in that order). By 2025, they forecast that the order will switch, with customer lifetime value taking the lead at spot number one, followed by customer retention at number two (and lead generation will drop down to spot number six.)