The Future of Marketing

Future Trends in Marketing

Marketing is a highly dynamic and responsive industry. There will always be new trends and new developments to stay on top of.

Let’s turn back to some of the business leaders that you’ve met in this blog for their thoughts on the future of marketing.

We asked these leaders what they think will disrupt the digital marketing world next. We conducted the bulk of these interviews in 2021–22; some trends have since evolved to greater and lesser degrees.

These are not guarantees or safe bets, but simply a conversation on what professionals are keeping tabs on. Robin Cohen from Rain the Growth Agency and Etka Chopra from e.l.f. point out coming trends they think will be important for digital marketing.

The big trends are around a few things. So the media marketplace has been continuing to be more and more pressured. There are more and more brands looking to do what OOFOS is looking to do--grow, scale in a lot of the same channels. So you need to have a really good strategy about both how you develop content and where you invest. And then measurement. If you are looking at the trades today, almost every headline has something to do with measurement, whether or not it's marketing mix modeling, MTA, currency measurement. So coming to some type of agreement on universal measurement is a key industry challenge.

And then the third one I would say is the deprecation of cookies. So that's something that ties to measurement, but definitely is a factor, as well. So really having a really solid understanding of your client's first-party data, leveraging systems such as LiveRamp that allow us to onboard that data so that we're less reliant on third-party.

So three big trends. One would be live shopping. Live shopping is already really big in the markets in Asia and also Europe now. But it's really starting to come to U.S. People still don't know how to use it yet because it's really new. But I do see live shopping really becoming like a really big thing for beauty. That's where you can actually have some celebrity or your internal people really talk about a product, and people can just purchase that product.

So you're removing that discovery piece. You're making that come to life versus just looking at a few stale PDP pages. Instead, a person is telling you how to use the product, what's in the product, and you can actually buy it there.

The second one that I think is really interesting is if you think about this whole conversation on metaverse. It's now become like this thing post-COVID, like, that's the big future, virtual reality, AR. Metaverse is nothing but having a strategy around augmented reality, virtual reality, if you think about NFTs, cryptocurrency, blockchain.

How are you going to do this in this virtual world, where you can create your brand in this virtual world, is the next big thing, I think, for not just beauty, but just in general, I would say, where brands have to start thinking about being there.

And then the third, which kind of ties into previous statement around metaverse, is gaming. Gaming is becoming more than just where you go and play. Gaming is becoming commerce. And I think figuring out how to infuse your commerce into gaming is another big trend that we're seeing, specifically in luxury, beauty and retail.

I mean, the question about keeping up with technology trends that are coming to marketing is a very interesting one, and which is why we are saying that we have to become masters of marketing in the digital age, because there are new trends coming all the time.

What is coming and on the horizon is 5G connectivity, virtual reality, extended reality, blockchain. So what do we do? How do we decide? How do we understand what is the most relevant one? Towards that, the first thing is to be curious, to be very, very committed and excited about what is coming, as an individual, as a group, because in L'Oreal, we have a mantra we call "seize what is starting." And that "seize what is starting" is very, very relevant. It's a very old mantra, but it's very, very relevant today.

So that's the first thing to do. The second thing to do is to be agile, to pilot, to try, to test, to test in a brand, to test in a country, to create partnerships, to have an open innovation system.

Which trends will impact marketing is difficult to predict. There was a lot of public discussion about whether NFTs (non-fungible tokens) would be impactful for marketers.

Here, Raja Rajamannar of Mastercard and Ann Lewnes of Adobe speculated about how they thought this trend might affect marketing.

I would be cautious. I have seen, actually, what it takes to mint an NFT, to buy an NFT, to sell an NFT. It's a horrible process. So you have to go through multiple... You need to have a metaverse kind of a wallet. You need to have a Binance kind of a thing, where you are converting real money into cryptocurrency. And from cryptocurrency, then you have to go to that OpenSea or whichever is the platform and buy the NFT and then get it transferred to your wallet.

It's such a lousy experience. Unless you are a nerd, you will not enjoy that process. You will see some anecdotes of Gucci has sold a digital NFT for $4,000. The real world bag costs you $1,600. Is it smart? Is it stupid? Or is it just a fad just to get some buzz? What exactly is it, right?

I think a lot of NFT today is not substantial at all. It is practically bordering on being silly and meaningless. That thing is there for some time. But I think, as we move forward, NFT will have significant applications that I can see.

Let’s summarize some of the trends that may impact marketers in the future.

As many of the professionals and experts have noted, the world of digital marketing is dynamic. And it's constantly evolving. By the time you read this, you may be witnessing new and exciting ways to acquire, engage, and retain customers. Therefore, the only way to stay current in digital marketing is to continuously learn and update your skills.

We have seen how companies can benefit from being on the cutting edge of new technology or cultural trends in the digital space. ELF's early adoption of TikTok proved to be wildly successful. THE YES'S use of AI in personalization provided them with a unique edge in the e-commerce fashion space. Mastercard's decision to move away from old ways of TV advertising to co-creating stories with their customers allowed them to create a new marketing platform that has benefited them as well as their partner banks and merchants.

Until now, companies have gathered substantial information about consumers by tracking their online behavior through cookies, which has allowed them to target potential users very effectively. However, consumers and governments are increasingly concerned about data privacy. Many countries have passed or are in the process of passing legislation that limits the extent to which companies can track people's internet activity through cookies. Some companies are also restricting collection of user data. Apple has introduced restrictions where third-party apps must get users' permission to track their activity.

The elimination of cookies has forced digital marketing advertisers to rethink their marketing strategies to reach customers effectively. One approach that many companies are testing is the use of contextual advertising, which matches the ad to the content of the website that a user is viewing without any knowledge of the user's browsing history. For example, a financial services firm may advertise on the website of The Financial Times.

The emergence of AI tools such as ChatGPT are likely to have a significant impact on the creator economy and ad creation, as well as how consumers search for and get information. AI tools are also likely to be more and more integrated in how we make changes to our budget allocation decisions in real time. For example, Meta has been investing heavily in advertising systems using artificial intelligence and machine learning to run a large number of experiments to automate budget allocation without access to user cookies.

These developments in AI are likely to have a major impact on digital marketing. And that is what makes digital marketing so exciting. It never gets old. And all of us must constantly learn and renew ourselves.

The integration of generative AI into marketing has the potential to reshape the way brands engage with their audience, craft content, and manage campaigns. Here are some ways generative AI can impact marketing:

• Personalized Content: AI can analyze vast amounts of data to understand individual consumer preferences. This analysis can be used to generate tailored messages or content that is more likely to resonate with each customer.
• Content Creation: Generative AI can assist in generating copy for advertisements, blog posts, and social media content. This application can help with quick content iteration or for inspiration to human creators.
• Design and Visualization: Generative AI, particularly Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), can create images, designs, or even videos. These can be used for advertisements, banners, or other visual content.
• Dynamic Content Optimization: AI can constantly test and iterate content variations to find the most effective messaging for different audiences, platforms, or contexts.
• Predictive Analysis: Generative AI can simulate various marketing strategies and predict outcomes, helping marketers to make informed decisions.
• Audience Segmentation: With the ability to analyze vast datasets, AI can identify more nuanced audience segments. It can then generate content specifically designed for these segments.
• Interactive Experiences: Generative AI can be used to create interactive content, such as chatbots for customer service or interactive video experiences, enhancing user engagement.
• Cost Efficiency: While there’s an upfront investment in setting up AI systems, over time, they can reduce the cost of content creation and optimization, especially for large-scale campaigns.
• Language and Localization: Generative AI can be used to automatically translate and localize content for different regions, ensuring consistency and relevancy.
• Trend Analysis: AI can spot emerging trends by analyzing online conversations, search queries, and other data sources, helping brands stay ahead of the curve.
• Enhanced Analytics: Generative AI can provide deeper insights into campaign performance, customer behavior, and engagement metrics, leading to improved strategies.
• Product Development and Prototyping: AI can help in the ideation phase, generating potential product designs, ad concepts, or campaign themes based on specified parameters.

Conversely, generative AI will likely bring new challenges that marketers will have to contend with, such as:

• Over-reliance: While AI can enhance many aspects of marketing, human intuition, creativity, and strategy are irreplaceable. Over-relying on AI without human oversight can lead to uninspiring or ineffective campaigns.
• Ethical and Authenticity Concerns: As AI-generated content becomes more widespread, there may be concerns about authenticity, misleading information, or ethical considerations. Brands will need to ensure transparency in their use of AI.
• Data Privacy Concerns: As AI relies heavily on data, there are concerns about data privacy, misuse, and potential biases in algorithms.
• Skill Gaps: Not all marketing teams have expertise in AI. There will be a need for training and reskilling.

In conclusion, generative AI holds immense potential to revolutionize marketing, making it more personalized, efficient, and data driven. However, its adoption should be balanced with human insight and a clear understanding of its capabilities and limitations.

What Will Marketing Careers Look Like?

Steve Gallo, President of OOFOS, offers some advice for marketing professionals today.

The advice that I would have for young marketing professionals today is, obviously, the concepts of how to build a business and grow a business haven't changed. The tools and the speed have changed. I've been working in this industry for 30 plus years. It's always been very fascinating to me. But the speed at which it has gone and consumer tastes changed more rapidly than ever. And the ability for brands to get a message out and react to those trend changes have really caught up. And that's why, I think, what performance marketing and digital marketing has done.

What I would say is you need to understand digital marketing. But you also need to understand still core basic concepts, whether that is the four P's, whether that is being focused on the consumer. And also, applying financial metrics to those concepts, to me, will never change. But it has it just continues to move much faster. So you also got to continue to entrench yourself with the consumer. You can't just sit back on a laptop or computer and phone and look at all those digital results. You have to really kind of live with those consumers and understand their psyche.

And that hasn't changed. And that will continue, in my opinion, to be extremely important. And it's maintaining the balance between those two.

Robin Cohen and Bianca Reed from Rain the Growth Agency offer some advice for marketing professionals.

Anyone looking to come into the business, I would absolutely tell them to stay on top of the trades. Something that I do myself and I tell my team all of the time, just every day, be reading. Just stay on top of what's happening. And don't be afraid to test and try things that are new. So I think there's always a tendency to want to do things that we know work, as professionals. But when you're coming into the industry, be brave. Put money aside. Be willing to test new things. Have the data to prove out why you believe it to be. But don't be afraid. Because this industry is moving and changing so dramatically. Good ideas come from everywhere. We always want to hear them. And so staying on top of things is going to make you successful and your clients successful.

Always be hungry to learn. It evolves so fast that what you learned two years ago will be completely irrelevant. So you have to continue to stay hungry and knowledgeable about the space. And content strategy, I truly feel like we're in this moment where content is queen in this. And I think what happens is you really have to make sure that wherever your media is, that content matches it. Our metabolism for content has continued to evolve. And so we want to see things that feel more personalized or unique to your culture. That would be my thing. And then I would be amiss if I didn't say inclusiveness. Make sure that the work you do matches the world around you and where we're headed as well.

Ann Lewnes stresses an understanding of the customer as central to successful marketing.

I don't think marketing has actually changed fundamentally. I think a good idea, a good product—those are always going to be core to marketing. I think engaging your audience with some emotional kind of stimulus is always going to be important. I think the thing that's really changed is the ability to understand the customer deeply. And so you need technology in order to be able to do that. And you need to be able to marry that technology with incredible creativity.

And so I think left brain, right brain might seem trite at this point. But I think that's the fundamental change that every company has to undergo. And you would be surprised. There are a lot of companies that still haven't made that pivot. I talk to even large enterprises who haven't made the pivot yet. I think the pandemic really shed a light on profound impact on business and on marketing that has to happen at every company, independent of size.

So whether you're a one-person shop with a kind of creator economy idea or whether you're one of the largest enterprises in the world, you're still going to have to have those creative campaigns that you can measure. And that's what's going, I think, to change marketing forever. There will be different trends, whether it is video, which is exploding, mobile, which is exploding. For Adobe, mobile has become the number-one acquisition vehicle.

And we need to do a better job at engaging younger people and just mobile-first users in different markets. All of that is going to be constantly changing—new media types, new customer types. But I think the fundamentals around creativity and the ability to really understand customer behavior and tune it—that's what's going to be the most important thing for marketing.

You’ve now reached the end of Digital Marketing Strategy. Congratulations! Let’s conclude with some final thoughts to wrap up.

As we learned at the beginning, digital marketing is constantly evolving. And our strategy must evolve with it. From the early days of the internet to the iPhone and now on to virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and beyond, we will always need to be ready to adapt to the next change as it comes. I encourage you to continue learning and exploring new ideas to stay ahead of the curve.

We started by discussing how digital marketing and direct distribution have allowed new players to enter mature markets and take share away from large dominant brands. This has created an urgency among legacy brands to learn new ways to reach and engage customers through digital marketing tools.

We then covered the fundamental building blocks of a good digital marketing plan, setting objectives, identifying target audience, articulating a clear value proposition, and having a set of KPIs or metrics to measure the success of your digital marketing efforts.

We discussed how companies can use paid, owned, and earned media to acquire customers and how they can use personalization, story making, and brand communities to engage and retain customers. And we elaborated on how to allocate your marketing budget and measure the effectiveness of your marketing spend using a variety of metrics such as ROAS, ROI, and LTV.

Budget allocation requires a deep understanding of customer journey and a careful balance between short-term performance marketing goals and long-term brand-building objectives.

We have also explored some of the emerging trends and challenges facing marketers today. We have observed how companies across a variety of industries are successfully leveraging digital marketing to create and capture value for their customers.

I hope that you have been inspired by these examples and are now equipped with the tools and frameworks to make informed digital marketing decisions for your own organization.