The Customer Experience Might be Completely Controlled By Digital Marketers in Next Few Years

Predictions for Digital Marketing in 2020

Nearly 500 Chief Marketing Officers and Senior Marketing Executives were asked about how they say the marketing world evolving by the Economic Intelligence Unit. They also conducted some very thorough and in-depth interviews with leading brands’ CMOs like JPMorgan Chase and Unilever. Their goal was to find out the key technologies and trends that will drive change in the marketing industry over the span of the next four years, and the results make for an intriguing read. 

Tech trends that are hottest for marketers

The results in the chart below are not surprising in many ways. It has been obvious that mobile has been steadily increasing as a marketing trend for years now – it makes up over half of web traffic. The internet of things is newer (somewhat) and is more exciting, but it still is not exactly clear how it will affect marketers. While there are loads of predictions and opportunities, anyone who tells you they know exactly how the IoT will be affecting your 2020 marketing is either profoundly misguided or just lying.

Personalization technologies are far from new, but with the available amount of data now at company fingertips, CMOs are starting to realize the opportunity and personalization is really coming into its own. Geo-targeting is only the beginning, but it should not be your objective. Advanced marketers should be creating statistical models to ascertain what signals mean customers are interested in specific products and serving them accordingly. 

A fairly new and groundbreaking technology for marketing that shows up here is block-chain technologies, however, it is not clear how it will evolve by next year. Banking, law, and intellectual property implications are starting to be noticed and realized, but it is not yet clear how it will be proven useful for marketers.

As of late, artificial intelligence has been a hot topic, especially because Google’s Alpha Go AI beat the world Go champion. Bringing together AI with content personalization offers some incredible opportunities for digital marketers, and this is something those with the capabilities to experiment with it should definitely looking at. 

2020’s Key Channels

Seems like 2020 is so far in the future but it’s only a few months away now – crazy, right? Shouldn’t we be flying to space by now? It’s easy to think the future is far away, but in reality, we are just living it already. But it’s too easy to think the future is always a few years off, and not realize that before you know it we’ll be living in it. And without noticing that your marketing efforts have fallen behind, just like that. 

With that note in mind, think about this chart of what CMOs predict will be marketing’s key channels for their businesses next year. Leading the pack is social, with web right behind, and mobile apps and web very close together at third and fourth. Does this look like your current investment priorities? The only way you won’t fall behind is if you invest in channels of the future today and not at a later date.

How to measure your marketing efforts’ effectiveness

Marketers are often seen as having trouble with reviewing how effective their campaigns are. To be fair, this is not completely their fault. It is very difficult to prove an increase in sales as the result of a new ad campaign, a difference of the messaging on the website or whether ir was just because of a push by the sales guys. 

But digital technologies provide massive opportunities for more accurately measuring key metrics and see how marketing is affecting sales. To calculate the all-important ROI is only possible when you have correct and accurate data on what is driving traffic and conversions.

Digital marketers are looking less at relying on customer acquisition stats and more on ROI, which in the end is the ultimate objective of any digital marketing campaign. This is an admirable objective that makes sense. However, if you think you will be able to measure ROI in four years’ time, why can’t we measure ROI now? No technological breakthrough in the next four years will come along and allow you to wave a magic wand and have your ROI calculated for you. 

The technology to be able to model ROI by measuring all types of data already exist, and if you have a feeling you will be doing so by 2020 you ought to start planning the implementation now. 
This is all very important to digital marketing agencies and digital marketers everywhere. For more blogs like this, check out our blog here. We are a full-service digital marketing agency, here to help you!