Gartner predicts disruptive changes to the industry trends this year-the fall of CX as the top priority, and a cutback in marketing analytics, among other things.
Research firm Gartner’s recent report titled “Predicts 2019: Marketing Seeks a New Equilibrium”, throws light on some interesting trends for 2019. In the midst of massive destabilizing forces, marketers will have to find a balance that benefits them. Over the next few years, the marketing landscape will look significantly different from what it does today, the report says.
Among the top changing trends, Voice, Privacy, and Automation will play a significant role in marketing strategies. Bite-size videos are changing the way communications are done, but data privacy laws are going to ensure that consumers need to agree on data usage. On the tech front, analytics organizations are bursting at the seams with data. In addition, automation is disrupting creative production, the ability to understand all processes and the skillset of available staff. Within three to four years, the report predicts:
CMO’s top priority will be Profitability over customer experience
Brands need to add user-level control of marketing data, to be able to benefit from less customer churn. While AI will boost content creation by more than a third, and autonomous marketing systems will issue about half of multichannel marketing messages. This will ensure greater targeting precision and lead to a 25 percent increase in response rates. Gartner says content, not data, is the bottleneck to personalization at scale, at this point.
While analytics has been exciting everyone, citing huge business benefits, over a few years, analytics teams will be reduced by half. This will be because they are not delivering business results, but spending too much time on basic tasks like data integration and formatting says the Gartner report.
The consumption of video ads will reduce in size- so consumers will watch 20% fewer video ad minutes each day compared to now, leading to broader adoption of short-form video ads.
CX and data transparency
In the report, perhaps the most disruptive prediction that goes totally contrary to the prevailing marketing perspective is the idea that customer experience initiatives may be facing decrease. The key reason, Gartner explains, is the lack of broadly accepted ways to measure successful CX, such as tying improvements in Net Promoter Scores to better CX, and then hoping for higher customer revenue. This lack of clarity will move marketing dollars away from CX.
Gartner also predicts a common data wallet interface will be used by at least 60 percent of major European brands by 2021 to ensure Customer data transparency. This will be a good growth opportunity for brands, because greater transparency of customer data sets a brand in its own identity and encourages targeted customers to share their preferences, ensuring greater brand loyalty.
