Marketers have the challenge of keeping up with continually evolving industries, where new trends and innovations pop up daily, and they must be on top of these new advancements to plan and implement effective campaigns. For B2C marketers especially, staying on top of trends is vital to gain and hold consumer’s attention and trust.
As we get ready for the new year, here are five hot B2C marketing trends to watch for in 2017:
- Marketing Automation
Marketing automation solutions are becoming a go-to for savvy marketers. These programs can give a much-needed boost to sales productivity, as well as reduce looming manual marketing tasks. B2C marketing automation solutions are specifically designed to engage audiences with personalised communication and messaging.
- Cross-Channel Execution
Consumers are constantly engaged with many different platforms, including social media, blogs, the internet, and brick-and-mortar stores, which can make it difficult to keep track of where is best to interact with them. With new platforms being introduced all the time, the only way to plan for the future of consumer interactions is to rely on a singular platform to execute all of these campaigns.
- Reliance on Machine Learning
Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence marketing are poised to break through in a big way during 2017. These advanced technologies will help marketers create individualised experiences and personalised messaging for highly segmented audiences. In the world of B2C marketing, these personalized messages are the secret ingredient to building loyal customers who will return again and again.
- Highly Personalized Content
All of these new technologies also open the door for highly personalised content. B2C marketers will be responsible for delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time – you know the story. The key is for marketers to capture this data at every single point throughout the customer lifecycle, and compile it into a highly detailed consumer profile.
- Data-Backed Analytics
This is where everything comes together: the data, the automation, the profiles, and the execution. In 2017, marketers will rely heavily on detailed dashboards to see which campaigns are working, which need some refinements, and which should be scrapped altogether.
Final Thoughts
For the B2C marketer, it will increasingly be all about data and personalisation. In order to fully leverage the information and opportunities available, marketers will have to rely on new technology to help organize and implement these campaigns. Time and resources are limited, but a possible solution is on the horizon: Artificial Intelligence Marketing. Find out where AI-Marketing already stands an how it will impact the role of the marketer in the near future in our whitepaper “The Bridge Between Data & Personalisation”.
