Marketing Trends for 2018

With 2018 right around the corner, most marketers and their agencies have already begun considering the moves they will make to capture their audience’s attention. Polls of agencies within the industry show a strong and deliberate trend towards three major themes: Content Marketing, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence/ Machine learning. Staying on the cutting edge of these developments in the coming year may prove to be vital in holding consumer’s attention, but, more importantly, they will help marketers provide their audiences with the personalized, engaging experience they have been craving.

Engagement fuels all digital communications. We are quickly seeing the end of the days of generalized, broad market content in exchange for a more personalized experience. Utilizing analytics from Big Data sources has allowed marketers to delve into new depths of consumer preferences and better target their markets. However, with the proliferation of artificial intelligence, marketers are likely to see an increase in 1 to 1 personalization. This means marketers can take big data results, map those into an AI program and see personalized, user specific content connecting consumers to new resources in a seemingly organic way.

In 2018, both Forbes and the Digital Marketing Institute believe combining these two tools will help take the grunt work out of content marketing and create unique, interesting and engaging content almost automatically and send specifically tailored content directly to consumers. Adobe has even announced that it believes automation will play a more vital role in marketing decisions as increasingly more intelligent software can build segments, identify key interests and initiate campaigns spanning multiple channels.

When combining Big Data analytics with AI to create custom content marketing, marketers should expect to see an uptake in loyalty and consumer satisfaction as increasingly more relevant content is being sent to them on a more regular basis. Chatbots may also fit into this trend as brands are looking for more cost-effective ways to serve their customers while still remaining personalized. Matt Navarra, director of social media at TheNextWeb posits, “With AI now being easier to integrate into various tools and services, chatbots will become far more useful and personalized with each interaction…”

Find more information here:

• 10 Marketing Trends to act on in 2018, Smart Insights
• How Digital Marketing will change in 2018: 15 Top Trends, Forbes
• Digital Marketing Trends for 2018, Digital Marketing Institute