According to the CMOs and marketing executives Marketo surveyed, the next three to five years will hold a number of changes in how companies view their marketing operations. Marketo’s Economic Intelligence Unit found that the 478 executives that took part in the survey would likely use their marketing as a way to build trust while keeping their customers engaged with the company.
The study also found that “driving engagement, experience and revenue” would be the true purpose of marketing in the future. Within the next three to five years, respondents predict their marketing efforts will:
- No longer represent a cost center
- May help shape corporate strategy
- Will be used to enhance relationships with customers
- Will foster loyalty, and possibly advocacy, among customers
- Will likely focus on overall customer engagement and their impact on revenue rather than mere customer acquisition
- Will seek to use data in a more efficient manner
In addition, 51% of respondents will focus on the overall customer experience during the next five years, which is in line with the findings from the study released by Econsultancy and Adobe.
The Marketo study also provided interesting findings on the future of technology in upcoming marketing trends. Areas where respondents are most likely to spend additional funds include:
- Social marketing – 37%
- Mobile marketing – 28%
- Marketing analytics – 25%
- Email marketing – 23%
It bears mention that Adobe’s study reported a different future for social marketing, predicting that it would grow less important over the next five years.
The trends respondents were most excited about through 2020 include:
- Internet of Things – 51%
- Personal mobile transactions in real time – 50%
- Wearable technology – 29%
- Virtual and augmented reality – 26%
While privacy can obviously be seen as a future obstacle to the proliferation of the Internet of Things and personal mobile transactions, only about 13% of survey respondents cited it as having an impact on the marketing trends by 2020.
Note: Of the 478 survey respondents, roughly half were CMOs. Respondents were primarily from North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, while only about 9% were from companies based in Africa or Latin America. More than half of the respondents represented companies with revenues in excess of $500M. Roughly 20% of respondents represented companies with revenues in excess of $5B. All currency was represented in US dollars.
Reference:
MarketingCharts. Future Trends in Marketing, According to CMOs And Senior Marketers. February 3, 2015.
