Predictions for 2016 and beyond
Every business is increasingly about managing change, marketing especially.
But for most marketers, it’s felt so fast that we are still addressing the nose bleed and scrabbling to keep up.
Aligning with the future of marketing is like trying to jump onto a moving train – it's constantly evolving and morphing, and today's nirvana is highly unlikely to be tomorrow's... let alone where we'll need to get to by 2020.
We are no longer doing digital marketing as a bolt on activity, we are now marketing very differently in a new broadband enabled digital era. Key implications include:
How the marketing-sales balance is shifting; why and how data is becoming the key; and how marketing technology is making ‘go-to-customer’ a more effective strategy.
The rebalancing of marketing from purely being an art form, to embracing scientific mindsets, is set to accelerate in 2016.
This white paper explores the blueprint required to get ahead of the game.
Wishing you a great marketing year ahead.
Mark Sallows, CEO and Founder of Turtl; and Joel Harrison, Editor-in-chief of B2B Marketing
In 2013, Forrester told us marketing changed more in the previous two years than the previous 50. By 2020, The Economist predicts marketing will transform again.
Since 2007, marketing change has been primarily driven by new media... digital, social, the rise of content.
And while advances in technology will continue to increase options for where to connect with customers, it’s the shift in the relationship between customers and businesses that is the crux of the matter.
The customer controls the purchase process... search, reviews, and communities provide nearly all the information they need.
From a brand perspective, this process is filled with unpredictable micro-moments that leave sales and marketing unsure of exactly where to go next.
While this has changed the role of marketing and brand, it certainly hasn’t diminished it.
On the contrary, when you consider the amount of customer behavioural data that can be captured from such activities, this shift puts marketing in the sweet spot to drive business growth.
Marketing can place content in these communities, but can’t guarantee when, where or how a customer will find the information.
This is the driver for transformative marketing. Marketers become transformative agents, redefining what it means for business to be truly customer-centric by reshaping what you expect from the customer relationship.
And the catalyst is customer data.
Data that paints a profile of the customer and their preferences, and that marketing spins into every function where understanding of the customer can improve efficiency, effectiveness and profitability.
If there is anything we can learn from the big data discussions of the last few years, it’s that having data is nice, but being able to readily use that data... that’s the proverbial ticket.
And it’s more than painting the customer journey... buyer insight is the price of entry. This is about buyer learning, in real time. Predicting the future of the business using today’s customer data as the centre of business planning.
Change is painful: transformation even more so. So if marketing is already struggling to keep pace with change, why add more complexity?
Gearing the business around real time customer learning... the crux of transformative marketing... is absolutely necessary to create authentic relationships with customers.
And in this transparent world, where every interaction between business and customer can become public, the relationship with the customer is only as strong as his or her perspective.