What Marketers Say: Trends in Marketing Automation
According to Dave Chaffey’s survey, marketing automation is one of the key trends for 2016, preceded only by content marketing, and big data (and it may be in fact used for both). More and more marketers start seeing the great value of marketing automation, while automation tools start becoming more accessible and user-friendly.
We wanted to know what marketers who actually use marketing automation in their companies think about where it will go and what new trends we can expect to develop in the nearest future.
This is a trend that’s being talked about a lot. We’re seeing more and more marketers understand that marketing automation actually goes hand in hand with personalization, and is a great tool for tailoring offers to individual subscribers’ needs. This, of course, requires collecting the right data and making the right use of it, so smart technology needs to be paired with a smart marketer. But if you match the two, the results might astound you.
The technology is of course already there: artificial intelligence is no longer a sci-fi movie thing, but allows you to even automate creativity. Custom audiences and re-targeting options are now a must in advertising. We can base our ads not only on who our audiences are, but – more importantly – how they behave, and interestingly, not only online, but now also in real life. It’s kind of exciting to think where this might take us.
Content marketing – as shown by the survey mentioned at the beginning of this post – has proven to be a popular and effective marketing technique and is definitely here to stay. What’s more, content marketing can be automated, as can be social media marketing. Of course, only up to a point, and again – with careful supervision from an experienced marketer.
Content marketing automation seems to be one of the trends that will be developing rapidly in the coming months. Are you already automating your content in any way? I’d be very curious to know.