How will marketing technologies change in 2015?

Today we will share with you the translation of Scott Brinker's article “How will marketing technologies change in 2015?” - in it, the author gives interesting forecasts about possible changes in marketing technologies in the coming year. Ambiguous, controversial, ... and therefore interesting. So let's go!

And again, welcome to the forecast season (earlier in our blog we shared “The Five Most Promising IT Trends” according to investors). You don’t even need to get your crystal ball to guess that in the next 30 days you will be surrounded by all kinds of predictors, including your future in marketing in the coming year.

Personally, I am ready to subscribe to the words of Yoga Berry that “it is very difficult to make an accurate forecast, especially about the future” (sometimes this statement is attributed to Niels Bohr). Most of the so-called predictions that we will hear in the coming month will belong to one of the following categories:

1. Trends that are already being observed (“mobile devices are being used more and more actively”).

2. The expectations of the one who makes the prediction ("products like mine will rule the world!").

3. Nebulae that you won’t even refute ("there will be big problems with big data").

I don’t want to be the Grinch who stole Christmas , but for me personally, this prediction must meet the SMART criteria :s pecific (concrete), m easurable (measurable), a chievable (achievable), r elevant (relevant) and t ime-bound (time-limited).

For example, my prediction:

In 2015, Microsoft will make at least one acquisition in the market for marketing technologies and spend more than $ 1 billion on mergers and acquisitions in order to position itself as a major provider of marketing platforms.

I will not argue that the prediction turned out brilliant. Microsoft, apparently, is one of the last major software vendors that has not yet taken a decisive step in the market of marketing technologies. Dynamics CRM is a good mosaic fragment, but only a fragment.

They can purchaseA “traditional” marketing platform such as Marketo, HubSpot, SAS, Sitecore, Acquia, or even HP Autonomy. However, in my opinion, it is equally likely that they will target the intermediate marketing layer (data administration platforms, client data platforms, tag management) or a web service for further movement in the trend of digital marketing channels - this can be LinkedIn or Yahoo .

By the end of 2015, one of two things will happen: I was right or I was wrong. Here is a prediction. (However, this is notadvice for investment. In fact, I don’t know what Microsoft was up to - it’s just my brainache, meanwhile, any step of the company can affect its capitalization in one direction or another. I have a few MSFT stocks that I acquired in the 1990s, so what I say about them is subconsciously justified).

7 very probable predictions about marketing technology in 2015

Although I am not inclined to attach great importance to any kind of prophecy, I will not argue that the end of the year is the right time to look back at the past year and look at the future year. This reflection will include trends, and hopes, and even foggy, meaningless words.

So here it is: 7 not-quite-predictions that I can make about marketing technologies in 2015.

No. 1. There will be more and more "marketing technologists." Whatever you call them, the number of technical specialists working in the field of marketing is clearly increasing. Most often I had to come across the term “marketing technologist”, and I think that he will take root next year. But where do these previously non-existent marketing technologies come from? Mostly they migrate from IT, where there are professionals who are eager to apply their technical talents to develop more attractive, customer-oriented innovations that will generate profits, and not just require costs.

No. 2. The universe of marketing technology will expand, not shrink.Yes, there will be major consolidation deals that work against this forecast. For example, if Microsoft acts according to my prediction, it will be consolidation. However, the number of new players this year will be greater than the number of existing ones (fortunately or unfortunately). As Battery Ventures Niraj Agroal told me in an interview, we only have a fourth inning so far. There is money there. Opportunities too. And it has never been so easy to develop cloud services.

I can even promise - and this is stronger than the prediction - that in my version of the Universe of marketing technology - in 2015 there will be more companies than in 2014. And this universe will still be depressingly incomplete.

The following three factors, however, will gradually make it more structured.

No. 3. The ecosystem of independent software vendors (ISVs) around large platforms will flourish.2014 was marked by the broad support of many large cloud-based marketing providers - Adobe, IBM, Marketo, Oracle, Salesforce.com - around which communities of independent software vendors formed. Marketo recently celebrated breaking the threshold of 400 official members of their LaunchPoint ecosystem. The message is this: one company can not do everything. It seems to me that such trends on the part of platforms will intensify in the coming years, and from a very large number of more specialized vendors it will become easier to select and integrate the right resources. I think that we will also witness impressive innovations in the depths of this interacting environment - data processing solutions and services will more naturally fit into the platform’s user interface.

No. 4. Intermediate marketing solutions will gain popularity. Tag management systems, data administration platforms (DMPs), user data platforms (CDPs), cloud applications, enterprise service buses (ESBs), etc. will develop rapidly, they are simply doomed to growth in 2015. These software solutions will provide such a marketing level of data management that will be distributed across many different systems. If this is implemented efficiently, heterogeneous marketing stacks will become more manageable, which will also allow brands to get rid of dependence on a particular vendor. A more talented IT approach to marketing technology management will contribute to the emergence of more advanced and flexible architectures.

No. 5. The border between software developers and service providers will blur. Everyone who works in the field of marketing technology should read the article “ Software vs. Services: Is There Really A Difference ”, written by Martin Keen of Gartner. It's just a bullseye. And after Publicis announced plans to acquire SapientNitro, the stakes that large holding companies would strive to develop this blurry border increased sharply.

Reflecting on Marketing as a Service (MaaS) - after arguing about it (in the comments) with Jerry Murray from IDC a month ago, I realized that he was right: this would be a serious channel for marketing software. But not only for large marketing cloud solutions.It will be an amazing channel for innovative and niche marketing applications , including for a wide variety of specialized programs - from original algorithms to cross-system “glue” - which service providers will develop independently to get non-marketable competitive advantages.

These three circumstances - the ecosystem of independent developers, the layer and convergence of software and services - will contribute to the formation of a rich and diverse landscape of marketing software that will become more accessible to marketers who do not want to be sucked by a dangerous integration quagmire. Now they, in fact, will be able to shift all technical problems to vendors, intermediate architecture and service providers, and the question that too many such problems accumulate is transformed from a bug to a feature.

No. 6. Some large companies will become new players in the technical marketing space.The most recent example is Dell. About Microsoft, I already said. Another class of technology giants that I would like to pay attention to is Cisco, Citrix, Intel, Intuit, and Xerox. I also believe that Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn will significantly expand the range of marketing software solutions they offer (however, in addition to the latter, this can also be expected from a couple of other companies within the PayPal Mafia area of ​​interest ). This is indicative of Bizo’s LinkedIn acquisition, which spurred competition between cloud marketing companies and “traditional” major software vendors.

No. 7. All technological marketing will be hot, but some parts of it will be hotter.. 2014 was the year of content marketing and predictive analytics, and this will remain relevant. Next year, it seems to me, five points will become centers of gravity. Four of them - sales support, after-sales customer marketing, finance in marketing and marketing talent management - these are hybrids of marketing and areas of responsibility of other departments : sales department, customer service, finance department and human resources, respectively. And the fifth will be an innovation, it concerns the Internet of things (IoT). When I say so, I, of course, help all this hype around IoT, and there are a lot of swindle here. However, the reality is that with the spread of connectivity and all kinds of devices, the field of hybrid online offline practice is almost in bloom.

In fact, I believe that there is also the sixth category, which will shoot in 2015. This is interactive content . I say this, having modestly looked down, because, yes, my company ion interactive offers software for marketing interactive content (how we came to such a life is described here) So you can very well see this more as my hope than a prediction. However, let me note that the fact that content marketing is becoming a victim of its own success is obvious. The white noise of passive content (the world wide web of guides and webinars!) Is simply stunning, its effectiveness in terms of increased reach and educational aspect is constantly falling. Interactive content changes the rules of the game, allowing marketers to generate more stable customer contact in exchange for transient customer communication. And here I am present not only. I am witnessing the emergence of a large number of competitors in this area. So around interactive content in 2015, you should expect a number of truly interesting innovations. Arguing on the subject of hybridity of the other five categories, we can understand it ashybridization of communications and consumer experience .

Although, yes, regarding the latter, I am not objective.

We are waiting for your opinion on the important events that will occur in marketing in 2015.