Being “future ready” is the hottest trend in the technology marketing, as opposed to promising to “future-proof,” as was the practice previously. Areas where the industry is seeing these trends the most are Big Data, social, cloud and anayltics. The question surrounding these develops is how to blend traditional IT and new practices without it ending up in silos, according to Gaurav Chand, Global VP of marketing at Dell, Inc.’s Enterprise Solutions Group.

Chand told John Furrier and Dave Vellante, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media Team, during Dell World 2015 that bridging the gap between the two is “a big change from a marketing standpoint.” In the past 18 months, Chand has seen a “rise of social media as a venue to authentically engage customers.”

The power of search

Chand has noticed “the power of search” making huge shifts in marketing. He explained that previously the marketing game was almost all “push” orientated. For example, print ads and television spots pushed the product to the customers. However, since the increase of mobile use, customers are pulling the product to themselves via search engines and websites.

Therefore, marketing is less about campaign budgets and more about the specificity of the message itself. Effective tools for this goal of finding the exact customer are targeted television spots, search and social. Chand cautioned that there is more to using Twitter than tweeting; it’s about “comparing the customer’s journey … and intersecting it at the right place.”

Chand continued, “That world [social media] changes every hour, on the hour.” Consequently, Dell has been running a social activation center and a consulting practice on social media for the past few years.

Stay tuned for the full video interview, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell World 2015. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts during Dell World 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE