The marketing world is changing at an unprecedented pace, proving “survival of the fittest” as the ultimate reality of the modern world. If we take a look at the factors contributing to this change, we come across a number of technological advancements and trends that have made people, processes and companies smarter than ever before.
Marketing in 2019 and Beyond!
While reading a piece in the CMO Magazine, I came across some interesting statistics and thought of sharing some insight with fellow marketers.
These are credible findings and taken from Gartner’s latest study titled as “Predicts 2019: Marketing Seeks a New Equilibrium.”
- By 2022, profitability will replace customer experience (CX) as the number one priority for Chief Marketing Officers (CMO’s). As a result, there is an expected reduction of 25 percent in marketing-funded CX programs.
- By 2022, content creators will produce as much as 30 percent of their digital content with help of AI programs and tools. As a result, creative process will be disrupted and content production will be much faster.
- As I wrote in my previous blog, artificial intelligence has major implications for content marketing initiatives. It will disrupt content marketing in a number of areas, such as content strategy, SEO, data analytics, content creation, content curation, accuracy/review, and personalization.
- By 2023, more than half of CMOs (60%) will slash their marketing analytics teams by half, as majority will fail to realize promised improvements.
- By 2023, 55 percent of marketers will rely on autonomous marketing systems to send multi-channel marketing messages on the basis of real-time data and consumer behavior. As a result, there will be at least 25 percent increase in the consumer response rate.
- As compared with today, consumers will watch 20 percent fewer minutes of video advertising by 2023. As a result, brands will have to adapt by embracing short-form of video ads.
There’s a long list of facts and numbers – but if we have to summarize the findings, it will lead us to three key areas.
1. Changing Consumer Behavior:
As we are moving closer to 5G revolution, the accuracy and usability of voice search is increasing. This has major implication for businesses as people are inching more towards convenience, leading to creation of more data. How marketers can/will use this data is still a challenge. At the same time, people, organizations, and governments are becoming stricter about that.
Moreover, consumer behavior is changing as people want to have more control over the content they consume, how do they interact with business, and how companies present their offer. This requires deeper level of understanding and personalization.
2. Regulatory Pressures:
In the recent past, we have seen too much hue and cry over data-protection and privacy issues. Particularly the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal was the key trigger that led to a more critical public debate about customer data-powered missteps that companies may take.
In the wake of these events, a number of worldwide regulators have taken strict actions and introduced some regulations, requiring strict compliance from the companies. One such example is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. As a result of these regulatory changes, marketing (particularly that involve people’s data) has become a very sensitive business.
3. Organizational Dimensions:
Organization’s internal stuff, practices, culture, politics, and strategies also impact the way marketing practices will be managed. On the one hand, there is growing appetite for the talent that could extract insights from the vast amount of data company has acquired.
Moreover, marketing teams are now inching closer to ‘profits’ than the typical ‘customer experience’, ‘customer journey’, and ‘prospecting’ domains. As a result, the rules of the game, role requirements, and executive scrutiny, all have changed.
Another area is that of technology integration and implementation of automation within the existing processes. Since there’s a strong realization that automation at functional level can bring in more efficiency, automation is making its way into new areas.
These changes will have a disruptive impact on the marketers’ jobs and how they approach functional and strategic initiatives.
Finally, marketing success in the future will not only require leveraging marketing technologies but also keeping an eye on the shifting market trends. Consumers are changing at a pace, much faster than that of companies; hence, marketers need to be well-aware of what is trending – as it’s the ultimate thing that will be working.