Prescience delivers popularity.
It’s why so many analysts, pundits and prognosticators share their vision for tomorrow this time of year. Predictions attract readership and encourage engagement.
I like engaged readers. So, I guess it is my turn to take a shot at the future. Cue up the dramatic music because here we go…Marc’s three most glorious guesses for marketers in 2018.
Guess #1: B2B marketers recognize customer intimacy can not be achieved with a platform. Customer relationship management and marketing automation software make the sales process more scalable and predictive. Yet, it fails to replace the relationship building process required to secure the deal. People do business with companies they know and trust. A buyer is more than a faceless and vanilla lead score. Companies need competent and relationship-oriented sales professionals.
Guess #2: Effective content is elegant and sophisticated. Content marketing shops in low cost, international geographies have done their best to commoditize the product. They offer pennies per word leading to an explosion in volume. A re-discovery of the impact of carefully crafted prose on reader engagement and search optimization will soon arrive.
Guess #3: Simplification of the marketing stack. Once the industry savants at Gartner suggested the CMO will soon outspend the CTO on technology, a myriad of vendors pivoted their development and M&A focus. The result: a complex and disjointed bounty of applications and tools. Marketers are marketers. We’re not technologists. The stack will thin to become more easily understood and implemented.
What do you think? Am I off target? Did I miss anything? Comment here or Tweet me @StrategicGuy.