Marketing trends shaping industries in 2018

As the year closes by on us, 2018 is looking to become one of the best avenues for growth in the industry. While the past few years have focused specifically on digital marketing efforts, 2018 will be a year where a holistic approach to marketing will frame all types of industries.

When marketing innovative technology, such as AI and home automation, marketing efforts will shape how companies create products, deliver them to customers, and prepare for scale. Everything from product testing to bug extraction has an impact on marketing, which is why products need to be superb when launching out the gate

1 New Product Development – While research suggests that more than 15-20% of total revenue is invested in NPD, fewer than half of such innovations are ever seen in the market. Why? Because “marketing” hadn’t been considered. If we look at Ettlie’s model of successful businesses, we have three sides to growth. There’s Research, Operations and Marketing. ROM. All three initiatives must coexist in a firm to create significant customer value. With the plethora of data and information available today, new product development is sure to create new avenues of growth for many industries when it blends in perfectly with marketing and customer research programs.

2 Customer Service – With the introduction of chatbots, cheaper “cost per interaction” is the new trend that’s shaping industries next year. With a new source of cost-effectiveness being discovered, customers can gain all the information they need from online and social media outlets. However, in terms of larger corporations, they would still need physical callers to standby. From a marketing standpoint, this change is huge as it finally determines the best protocol to deliver based on a customised userbase. Say, if a 25-year-old male gamer wants to return a certain video game because he wasn’t satisfied with the quality of it, the chatbot understands his demographics and can upsell after resolving his query. The industry benefits to enhanced customer service are immense and will be fully discovered in 2018.

3 Programmatic buying – With 2018 becoming the next generation for programmatic buying, industries can finally gain clarity on where their ad spends are going. With regards to revenue generated, industries can calculate the cost of acquisition on a scale never seen before. Programmatic has changed the way we view media buying and planning, and its only rapidly expanding. With the addition of more sophisticated technology, we can’t foresee the future, but we can understand its impact on industries.

4 Artificial Intelligence – AI is taking over marketing in a big way. With many startups currently focused on AI as their bridge towards the next level of growth, industries will benefit multifold from AI:ML enabled marketing experiences. Just recently Alibaba (Chinese E-commerce Corp) launched a marketing campaign with AI enabled experiences. They tied up with KFC in a highly trafficked Chinese mall to create a kiosk. The kiosk would enable Alibaba payment wallet customers to pay for their KFC with a smile. It was called the “smile to pay” campaign and it put Alibaba on the map in terms of virality.

5 Virtual Reality – In a space where marketing initiatives have gone digital, VR marketing has redefined industry trends. With most major corporations entering the VR space, including Google and Samsung, there is a race to figure out which brand will win the VR battle. While it’s a heated race for companies, customers are loving the experience of the VR goggles and games. With Kingfisher entering the VR space across festivals and events, they’ve uncovered a new market to engage with. Along with Kingfisher, there are brands like Harley Davidson that have created multiple VR experiences to delight new consumers, sometimes younger ones, so that they’d join the Harley Davidson family.

6 Corporate Culture – While a completely non-tech aspect of marketing tends, but a core one nonetheless, corporate culture has become increasingly important in industry. The culture of the brand and the way that the people operate has become paramount. Corp Culture was essentially a PR term popularized by open thinkers and speakers, to advance innovation in companies like Google and Apple. The demand for doing so has lead to a cultural revolution in the work environment, where everybody thinks about the “brand” first and then the “culture”. Where the culture reflects the brand in its core, employees have begun to understand that their personal “brand” may or may not be a fit in the company’s “brand”. This has lead to a lot of attrition and value chain loss in terms of customer satisfaction. With less than 50% of employees engaged for 8 hours a day, corporate culture will be shaping industry next year, where HR and marketing will be working twice as hard to retain good talent.

7 Big Data Revolution – Many perceive that the big data revolution has already surpassed us, and in many ways, it has. However, the next true wave in big data will arise from marketers demanding more transparency from publishers, brands and companies. Google and Facebook, two of the largest advertising business models, have already pledged to provide more information across the board. Adding to that, the sheer volume of data available to marketers makes it easy to make key business decisions. With blockchain, machine learning, and automated processes, brands will have more data available to them than ever before. This changes the fundamental way that businesses operate and creates new avenues for development beyond traditional sales.

NEW MOULDS

• Marketing innovative technology is shaping how companies create products, prepare for scale
   
• New product development is sure to create avenues of growth for industries