What's ahead for marketing tomorrow?
Writing for Forbes.com, Kimberly Whitler, a professor at the University of Virginia, asked CMOs for their predictions.
She discovered:
She discovered:
- "B2B influencer marketing" will become all the rage. CMOs will turn to popular business authors, speakers, podcasters, and executives with large followings and pay them to hawk their products.
- CMOs will also begin to rely more on employees to spread brand messages through social, knowing they can speak more effectively than ads. And, because buyers hang out on many social platforms, CMOs will begin to think "multichannel first."
- B2B CMOs will embrace "account-based marketing," but not without a struggle, because it's hard to influence every decision-maker on every buying committee. To that end, CMOs will begin to use a "recommendation engine" like the one used by Netflix.
- Design will become the key brand differentiator, because big data is now just a "commodity." And educational content will become king. Unfortunately, CMOs will produce too much of it for buyers to absorb.
- CMOs will quit focusing on new martech (although thousands of new martech products will flood the marketplace). CMOs will focus instead on cybersecurity. They're spending up to 25% of their budgets on social, and have made their companies targets for cybercriminals.
- 30% of CMOs will be fired next year, because they lack the ability to drive results. Polish that resume!
