The below are the few key trends of Marketing Analytics and Marketing Technologies to watch for in 2018 –
- Most of the companies are spending 5.8% of their budget on marketing on analytics. The percentage remained unchanged from 2012 but it is going to be increased to 17.3% within the coming three years.
- The more interesting thing than spending percentage is that the company’s reliance on marketing analytics to make the decision has increased from 30% to 42% in the last 5 years. It could also be seen that B2C companies are using data analytics 55% time when making the decision.
- There is an increase of 28% in demonstrating the impact of marketing spending on quantitative tools over the last 5 years. It is a very important trend and should be the one to watch out for.
Marketing Technology trends of 2018
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be everywhere
AI is not a marketing tool in itself but its application to marketing tools like ad service to targeted ad more effectively, marketing automation software for personalising content and analytics tool like PaveAI to find similar patterns at a lightning speed and scale that cannot be matched by human are going to be increased manifold.
AI technology will be used most in marketing chatbots, these are called the gateway drug for marketing AI. Use of chatbots has increased 20 times in the last few years.
Another area where AI will be used is social media marketing.
- Marketing will be more data-driven
Data-driven marketing is not new, it started to gather momentum in 2013 and since then it is being used more and more. Tools for data analytics are becoming more powerful, cheaper and easier to use which enables small to medium companies to compete with larger one.
Tech-savvy marketers are intelligently collecting data about their regular and prospective customers not only from the usual source like emails and website visits but also from corporate events and trade shows. They are using this information in the CRM and automation systems to build a profile richer profile.
- Marketing automation suits are going to get more sophisticated
In 2018, the automation suits are predicted to change to be more sophisticated and personalized. Marketers are really pushing hard to produce content more relevant and communications more timely with account-based marketing (ABM).
4. Martech investment will increase
Investment in martech tools will increase in 2018 mainly due to two developments. The first of these is an increase in the availability of breadth of tools. These are actually addressing every phase of content marketing, starting from content planning, research, development and optimization to distribution and sharing and in the end analytics that is helping to enhance the strategy and planning.
The second development that took place is the increasing sophistication of martech tools incorporating new and emerging technologies like augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) along with the AI in the matrix.
This development will encourage many small firms to explore how leverages could be taken using these technologies.