What are the 3 biggest trends in digital marketing that you foresee for 2020 and beyond?
- With content marketing generating 3X the amount of leads (as compared to other outbound channels), I see massive increase in content marketing investment across both text and video content.
- According to Gartner, 25% of customer service will AI powered chatbots by 2020 (that’s up from 2% in 2017). I foresee a lot more business adopting AI to increase growth and save costs.
- With elections around the corner – spends on influencer marketing are going to catapult. We’re going to see an enhanced ripple effect of this in 2020.
Brand marketers in today’s ecosystem are juggling too many things from product growth, sales to marketing. How do you think these brands can be prepared for the rapid changes that technological innovations will bring in the coming future?
Nurturing the right skill sets becomes pertinent. This helps you identify which technology innovations are right for your company and which ones you can choose to ignore. Spending time and resources on product innovations which isn’t going to move your needle will only set you back.
What are the biggest ad platforms that you see growing in 2019-2020 and why?
In the last 5 years FB has grown ~7X in global ad revenues pulling out all stops in gaining ad market share. FB will continue to catapult and chip away ad share from competition.
How can brands derive ROI from branded content & video? How should they really measure returns from these marketing avenues against the bottom line for their company?
It’s important to benchmark goals for any marketing initiatives be it content, video or paid search etc. Once a brand does that – it becomes easier to analyze ROI from a specific campaign. At AdLift, for editorial/textual content & video – some of the KPIs we measure against are – increase in Organic traffic, increase in brand search volume, increase in engagement rates/time spent on site which piggy back into increase conversions. With video, we future build out remarketing audiences for customers that viewed/engaged with the video.
How do you see influencer marketing evolve in 2019 and beyond? Will Influencer Marketing become a must-do for every brand?
With elections around the corner – spends on influencer marketing are going to catapult. We’re going to see an enhanced ripple effect of this in 2019 and beyond. Influencer marketing global spends are going to cross $10B by 2020.
Do you think short term performance marketing is killing brand creativity? Is the Digital Medium causing brands to becoming myopic in their vision of marketing?
Not at all. If short term performance marketing campaigns have the right foundations in place with a KPI driven goal which is met – it’s a win-win. It’s important to have an eye on the ball vs. the pie in the sky! Having said that, if resources/budget permit – working on the bigger picture – be it technology adoptions, martech etc.
