Why Marketers Need To Go All - In On Technology In 2018 - A Report

 

- Vinod Harith

2018 promises to be the year of marketing technology. Forrester predicts that Martech budgets will take center stage in 2018 with double digit growth. Gartner concurs: Martech spending is set to account for 22 percent of the marketing budgets, according to the 2017-2018 Gartner CMO Spend Survey. Apparently, brands realize that in order to deliver superior customer experience and business results, they will need to move past paying lip service and build a strong data-driven marketing practice. Going all-in on Martech enables marketing teams to innovate, accelerate, measure, fine-tune, and repeat processes over and over again - until they have perfected the formula for success.

So where are global CMOs putting their technology investments in 2018?

The role of CMOs is undergoing a radical shift with global heavyweights such as Coca Cola, Hershey’s, Kelloggs and others consolidating marketing, strategy, and commercial responsibility into a single role titled - Chief Growth Officers or CGOs But how exactly are CMOs looking to deliver on their newly expanded roles? They are turning to Martech, of course. 73 percent of marketers believe Artificial Intelligence (AI) will dominate the marketing-scape this year, while 20 percent think it will be voice-first technologies such as chatbots, smart assistants, and voice search, according to a recent survey. 63.5 percent of marketers also believe that Big Data will finally usher transformative results for marketing in 2018.

Here are four key areas where Martech will make the maximum impact: