8 Transformational Martech Trends with Uses Cases, 2018

Did you know? More marketers will embrace an expanded role in 2018 – focused not only on customer communications but also on crafting customer experiences that deliver on brand promises everywhere.” – Forrester, Predictions 2018

Today’s marketers need to get better and faster at reacting to changes in consumer behaviour and responding in real time. Our comprehensive guide to winning the marketing battle in 2018 brings together a list of result-focused Martech trends that are immediately actionable. Because, the time to act is now.

Broadly speaking, our observations have indicated the following paradigm shifts:

• Consumers now have many avatars
  If you thought that treating each consumer as an individual was enough for personalised targeting, then it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Today, an individual consumer acts in very different ways, depending on the channel or platform he/she uses. So, on LinkedIn, they might be following influencers and building their professional network, while they use Facebook to stay in touch with their friends and family. While using Google at work, their searches may be related to learning new skills but while at home, these can be specific to their child’s school project. Martech needs to understand this trend of ‘consumer parallelism’ and address it with advanced data analytics.

• Consumers interact with brands in many ways
  Consumers interact with your brand through a dizzying variety of channels, platforms, and devices. Now, more than ever, it is critical for marketers to invest resources into creating unmatched consumer experiences across the ecosystem which complement one another. Today, Google has developed the ability to predict the intent behind a user’s searches and will prioritise results that answer the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the particular search terms, not just the ‘what’. Forward-facing marketers are considering Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to tell their brand stories and are using these to create ultra-immersive experiences that transport consumers into a new world, or show products in a way that fits seamlessly into their world. A host of industries are steadily turning to conversational interfaces to interact and engage with their consumers. Whether it is a shopper visiting an e-commerce store or a consumer on an e-banking site, bots that can ‘chat’, through text or voice, are going mainstream.

• Technology innovations dominate Marketing
  As technology continues to evolve at a breakneck speed, marketers can adopt and leverage it to maximise their ROI. Artificial Intelligence can perform a wide range of data-intensive tasks, thus allowing marketers to focus on strategy. Advanced analytics also helps marketers optimise the vast amounts of data now at their disposal. This data explosion and the focus on consumer experience has led to a convergence of Martech and Adtech. Finally, to stay lean and agile, and to cater to a dynamic, often fickle consumer, marketers are no longer relying on large, highly customised, and complex applications to run their business. Instead, they are turning to specialised, small apps that are integrated over APIs to manage various services.

Take a deep dive into the Martech Trends for 2018 and stay ahead, armed with the right insights