AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been a hot topic since Google’s Alpha Go AI beat the world champion Go. Combining AI and content personalization offers incredible opportunities for digital marketers. But what else will be a massive hit in the Future? 2020 is just two years away. While flying cars are still a way off, we are certainly more sophisticated in digital marketing tools and techniques. But what’s next? What is the Future of digital marketing technology?
Channels
The Economist Intelligence Unit interviewed 499 Chief Marketing Officers (SMEs) about their views on marketing. They also conducted in-depth interviews with CMOs at leading brands like Unilever Chase and JPMorgan Chase. They wanted to know what trends and technologies would drive change in the marketing industry over four years. Below is a graph showing the results of their research on what they believe the top marketing channels will look like in 2020.
New Technologies
AI
It is clear that AI is a hot topic right now and will only continue to grow in popularity as it becomes more reliable and evolves. We see some very excellent examples of this technology in 2018, such as self-driving cars being manufactured and sold. Both Amazon and Netflix have AI features that assist with transactions and recommendations. It will be used in many marketing applications, including voice, face, chatbot recognition, and content creation. We expect it to continue being used in marketing strategies. Because of its increasing accuracy in analysing consumer behaviour, AI could be a standard in marketing strategy. This will allow it to provide a more personalized and interactive shopping experience.
Personal Assistants
Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa – all these AI assistants are already used to aid people in everyday communications. How will this technology grow? This technology could continue to grow and be used to assist people on a personal level and businesses. It can do more than you ask, provide personalised services, and track your behavior to help you. The personal digital assistant market will double in the next two-years to reach 1.6 billion by 2020.
Influencer Marketing and Social Media
While not exactly “new technology”, influencer marketing will continue to evolve and be a major part of how we use social media and market products. Both B2B as well as B2C will continue to evolve this. It has been mostly used to promote a handful of products. However, we expect it to become a more continuous strategy than a singular product-focused one.
Social Media is an established tool in digital marketing strategies for many years. We don’t anticipate any major changes to social media innovation. Instead, we expect constant updates and changes. Social Media is becoming more popular every year. As you can see, it will soon be the main channel for marketing in the eyes of many large CMO’s. Already, social media is changing in many ways. We now watch more videos than we actually socialize with others. Social Media will continue to evolve over the next few years.
Digital marketing is set to evolve in many other ways, including more interaction and direct selling via VR and Chatbots. Chatbots could even take over customer service. Shortly, we may see entirely new digital marketing tools and techniques. Keep an eye out!