This week at the GeekWire Summit, we asked some of Seattle’s most brilliant marketers to peer into a crystal ball and look at the future of marketing and the role of technology propelling it forward.
Imagine you’re a marketer in the year 2020 (it’s not very far away). In what ways have new innovations in marketing technology redefined your customer’s experience? How has technology shaped brand engagement, the sharing economy, and your role as a marketer? With the proliferation of data, apps, social platforms and automation tools, how have you partnered with your IT department to maximize scale and take full advantage of the cloud, embedded automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence?
These are just some of the questions we explored with more than a dozen Chief Marketing Officers from some of the region’s most innovative companies, and a few of the answers we’ve predicted for the next four years.
AI, VR and AR: In what ways will artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality shift how customers engage with brands? Whether it’s developing a gaming avatar with your own facial features, walking through a customized online version of your dream house, or transposing yourself poolside at a virtual island resort, VR puts the magic of 3D interaction into the hands of you – the customer – before buying the product. How does that influence the way you engage with products? And if you’re the marketer, how does that shift your engagement approach?
Data, data, everywhere: Big data is driving business strategy, engagement tactics and personalized marketing more than any other factor. But until recently, many marketers lacked the ability to make meaningful decisions in real-time with the plethora of data available to them. Data optimization, 360-degree data views, end-to-end monitoring, data hygiene and warehousing are just a few of the capabilities marketers now have at their fingertips. Expect more as marketing and IT continue to converge.
Automation is driving more than cars. Marketing automation has become mainstream, providing predictive analytics to drive purchasing decisions, allowing marketers to influence personal interactions before, during and after the point of decision. Machine learning takes this to a new level – leveraging meaningful data to automate personalized interactions to a grain where each user feels like the brand exists solely to serve her or her needs.
Internet of Things: Engaging customers at different stages of their marketing journey requires creating personalized messaging, scenario-specific experiences and omni-channel campaigns. It also requires identifying which devices customers use for specific tasks and adapting to new Internet of Things (IoT) devices that continue to evolve. As IoT becomes more mainstream, supporting the enormity of data collected, analyzed and responded to in real-time to automate these “things” becomes even more important. Creating a platform that enables this type of rich communication across billons of data points demands the ability to scale at an unprecedented level.
“I’d like to thank the Academy.” Film-making is becoming ubiquitous. If you’re still evaluating video as a medium, consider this: As the Huffington Post reported last year, millennials watch YouTube more often than all other broadcast channels combined. Why? It feels more real to them. So as virtual reality and the perception of video reality converge, what is the reality for brand engagement? If you’re trying to engage the next generation, how will your mar-tech strategy leverage new platforms like Periscope, Blab, SnapChat, vine and others that allow consumers to be the stars?
At Centric Seattle, we’re passionate about the future, leveraging today’s marketing-technology tools for tomorrow’s impact. Whether that’s driving omni-channel campaigns with billions of transactions, analyzing real-time event streams, or driving CRM integration with your marketing automation platform, our focus is simple: We make marketing work.
How will it work for you as the future of marketing and world of technology collide?