Trends for Marketers to Prepare for in 2018: #4 Data Usage
As the end of the year draws closer, our experts have been contemplating what could be the “next big thing” in digital marketing in 2018, narrowing down their myriad of thoughts to just one or two top predictions that they believe will shape the coming year.
Whether it’s a relatively new trend, or something that’s been around for a while but is really going to take off in 2018, these trends are from the unique perspective of Mediative’s experts, how they see 2018 unfolding, and what digital marketers should be considering when planning next year’s marketing efforts.
Download the full eBook, with all 10 trends to prepare for here.
Data Usage
From Big Data to Good Data
A few years ago, Big Data was all anyone was talking about. It was a term used to describe the large volume of data that a business processes on a daily basis. But when it comes to data, the volume that is generated is irrelevant if nothing is being done to harness the data, and use it for more informed decision-making and strategic marketing. Data has accumulated and increased over the years. In fact, ninety percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone(1) and it’s been predicted that by 2025, 163 zettabytes, or 163 trillion GBs of data will exist(2). But only a small portion of it is being leveraged.
In 2018, efficient usages and application of data for marketing will increase, making data much more valuable to organizations – and not just the digital giants of Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. Most businesses will be making better use of the data available to them, through more advanced data strategies, visualization, advanced/predictive analytics, statistical models, machine learning, artificial intelligence, business and tech integration, new skills and technologies, and much more.
From Advertising to Experience
As businesses start to understand their data on a deeper level, and harness it for more strategic marketing, we will see much more sophisticated communication between businesses and consumers, moving even further away from traditional advertising at consumers, and more toward creating a truly customized, and personalized shopping experience. Using the data that is already available to them and taking advantage of AI and machine learning, businesses will be able to take hyper-personalization to a whole other level. Better customer segmentation, and creating data-driven personas and identity graphs (a database that houses all the known identifiers that correlate with individual customers) will lead to a deeper understanding of actual purchasing behaviour. Data and AI provides organizations with the ability to automate scoring and predict more accurately which customers in an organization’s database are most likely to purchase a product/service. By using AI to automate segmentation and communication, interactions with customers will be more personal and effective, helping businesses acquire and retain a larger percentage of customers. As a result marketers will see improved response rates, reduced costs, and ultimately, more revenue.
From B2C to M2C (Machine to Consumer)
Interactions with machines are increasing daily, whether its via your Apple watch, Siri, Alexa, or a customer support chatbot. Some of the time, you won’t even realize you’re interacting with a machine rather than an actual human. A PwC study(3) reported that 27% of consumers weren’t sure if their last customer service interaction was with a human or a chatbot. AI can help scale support services with chatbots, trained to answer simple or common queries that take up a significant amount of human time, and they’re becoming increasingly popular with companies where a good customer service call centre is critical. The PwC study reports that every year, $62 billion is lost through poor customer service, and that 67% of business executives see the potential of AI to automate processes and increase efficiency, leaving humans to concentrate on meaningful work.
At Mediative, we see one step further. Chatbots can definitely help a lean team do more work, and free up experts to concentrate more on strategy. But machine-managed user interactions can also see trends emerge and mine customer feedback for valuable data on the customer experience. Instead of waiting for the time and budget for focus groups, new software releases and inaccurate surveys, we can see what customers like and don’t like about products. This valuable feedback can then be baked in to new products, upgrades and rewards.
The use of AI and machine learning will make the day-to-day optimization process much more precise and scalable and will allow marketers to focus on the elements that humans are better at – like creating an ad that connects emotionally with a consumer..
Download the full eBook, 10 Trends for Marketers to Prepare for in 2018 here.
Sources:
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- http://www.iflscience.com/technology/how-much-data-does-the-world-generate-every-minute/
- https://i.marketingprofs.com/assets/images/daily-chirp/171023-infographic-ml-and-ai-full.jpg
- http://pwcartificialintelligence.com/

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