Trends in Digital Marketing For 2020 and Beyond

In the coming years, marketing professionals are expected to fully control the customer experience – creative jobs are becoming more and more important in the marketing sphere.

The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 499 – just one shy of the round figure of 500 – Top Level Marketing Executives and Chief Marketing Officers on their predictions of the marketing landscape, and also sat for comprehensive interviews with CMOs working at top brands like JPMorgan Chase and Unilever. They wanted to find out the critical trends and technologies that will be at the heart of the marketing sector dynamics in the coming four years. And the feedback is interesting.

These are several important findings for marketers, however, if you need to read the full report sign up for a downloadable copy.

Latest Cutting-Edge Trends For Marketers

The following information is not a surprise for anyone. Mobile has been a huge wave in marketing for a couple of years and has 50{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} of web traffic. On the other hand, The Internet of Things is nascent and intriguing, though there lacks visibility on how it will impact marketing. There are many predictions and opportunities, however, no one knows how IoT will impact marketing in the coming year, and anyone who says they do is lying or completely misguided.

In the last several years, there has emerged a wide variety of technologies used in personalisation. But, with the increase of data that companies have at their disposal, CMOs are now recognising the emergence of a huge opportunity to make personalisation more effective. Geo-targeting is a starting point, and it must not be your goal. Sophisticated marketing professionals should be coming up with statistical tools to predict the signals that indicate customers prefer certain products and then adjust their services accordingly.

Another innovative and emerging technology for marketers, that has emerged on the scene is blockchain, but also there is no clear pathway on how it will evolve by 2020. In law, intellectual property and banking its effects are already being felt, however, in the marketing industry its value has not yet been shown.

Artificial Intelligence has also been on everyone’s lips, specifically since Google’s AlphaGo AI trounced the Go world champion. Mixing AI together with content personalisation affords incredible solutions for marketers, and it is an opportunity for marketing researchers to explore the possibilities they can create.

Crucial Channels in 2020

At the moment, most people feel like 2020 is a long way off. Were we not bombarded with predictions of flying cars, super intelligent computers and robo-butlers by 2020? Wasn’t a moon base a certainty?

But, surely now we are almost there. Can you recall 2012? It must have been such a long time ago. Was it? And the London Olympics was just a while ago. Does it feel that way? Yes, it does! We have come a long way since, in contrast to the time left to welcome the year 2020. I recognise I am dwelling on this point too much, however, my view is that it is too easy to discount the distant future, and not understand we will be living in it in no time. Suddenly, you are behind on your marketing initiatives. And you are left wondering “what just happened?”

So, considering that, give serious thought to this chart that outlines the predictions of CMOs on the critical marketing channels for their enterprises during 2020. Social is the first, and mobile applications and mobile web come in at 3rd and 4th. Is this a reflection of your current investment rankings? Prioritising investment in future channels now and not at a later period is the sole approach to make sure you don’t lag.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Your Marketing Initiatives

Most of the times, marketers are viewed as facing difficulties to evaluate the effectiveness of their initiatives. To be fair, the blame is not fully on them. It’s extremely difficult to demonstrate that an increase in sales is due to a new advertisement initiative, an adjustment of the messaging online or whether it was just due to the unabating effort by the sales department.

However, digital technologies avail numerous avenues for measuring crucial metrics more accurately and reporting how marketing efforts are influencing sales. Computing the key metric ROI is only possible if you have exact information on the actual drivers of traffic and conversions.