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If I could predict the future, I’d be very busy polishing my crystal ball, charting the courses of the planets, picking winning lottery numbers and buying stock in companies you’ve never heard of. Instead, I’m writing this article and wondering if it will rain later, so there you have it. Still, a little educated guesswork can be very valuable in informing our personal and professional planning. Anyone who’s involved in e-commerce or digital marketing will recognize the following as things that are already happening to some extent but can be expected either to become best practices or start edging into the mainstream in the coming year. Barring a black swan event, we can foresee:
Massively Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence
Up until now, AI has largely been a curiosity rather than a commercial tool. We’re rapidly approaching a tipping point, though: not having an AI strategy today is a little like not having an internet strategy in 1995, and those who fall behind may well end up kicking themselves later.
According to Ralph Haupter, president of Microsoft Asia: “2018 is the year that [AI] will start to become mainstream, to begin to impact many aspects of our lives in a truly ubiquitous and meaningful way.” Three factors are currently converging, all of them related to networks and how these are used:
- Big Data: Practically everything worth knowing now exists online. From which link a person clicks on to inner-city traffic patterns to real-time retail prices, more is now measured and stored than ever before. Companies that make use of this resource will soon be able to out-think and outperform their competitors handsomely.
- Cloud Computing: Storage and processing power no longer necessarily requires you to purchase hardware. Instead, companies can lease as much computational ability as they need, when they need it.
- Machine Learning: Software algorithms and the theory behind them continue to improve, allowing programs to identify patterns and optimize solutions in ways that human minds can’t.
In advertising, we can expect to see better chatbots and much more granular market segmentation leading to individualized content delivery; in daily life, virtual assistants will start to take over our more repetitive and routine tasks; and as far as product development goes, consumers will increasingly expect features such as voice and facial recognition.
Greatly Increased Emphasis on the Immediate and Interactive
With the rise of social media, companies’ branding mix has now expanded to include their “community” of evangelists, customers, and critics. By now, though, it seems that audiences have become a little jaded to social marketing techniques that were brand new only a few years ago, and the way forward seems to include a step back.
Tweeting and blogging will no longer be enough in 2018. Instead, building brand loyalty will increasingly require live, unmediated contact. There are degrees to this, of course: not every company can afford to shoot a car into orbit. For most businesses, though, it will soon become necessary to maintaining their credibility through events such as livestreamed Q & A sessions with senior executives, in-person conferences, and trade shows.
Although there is undoubtedly an interplay with the previous trend, physical customer service reps may well prove to be more efficient at gaining conversions than even the most advanced bot. Companies that have been reducing their physical footprints in favor of call centers and online portals can be expected to slowly start reversing this trend as face-to-face communication gets seen as more concrete and valuable.
Digital Babies Come of Age
Consumers born in the internet age are now starting to enter the workforce and causing a demographic shift unlike those of previous decades. Just like all facets of business, and especially marketing, underwent a sea change when the primary market shifted from Baby Boomers to Millennials, we’re now looking at “Generation Z” becoming a major force in the next five years.
Smart managers will already be scoping out the implications. In particular, while Millennials tend to view technology as a tool, Gen Z’ers regard constant, instant connectivity as part of the natural order of things, if not a human right. This same familiarity with the web-world informs their attitude to finances, corporate responsibility, politics and everything else. Will they be willing to assume massive debt to gain an education in a world where job security is a thing of the past and the concept of a career has become somewhat amorphous? How will they respond to the “hooks” traditionally used in advertising? Will we see a social shift away from the paradigms based on the nuclear family?
Nobody, as yet, has a convincing set of answers to questions such as these. Starting this year, we should keep a careful eye on developments that may indicate the start of some truly significant trends.
Affiliate Marketing 2.0
Spam is dead, piggybacking on others’ websites by seeding links is dead, flooding the internet with highly derivative content is (finally) dying. The affiliate mechanism, on the other hand, is alive and well within these new parameters.
As search engines become smarter and customers more discriminating, a great deal of chaff has been discarded from the affiliate game. Meanwhile, the mobile market keeps growing, more companies are becoming interested in going the affiliate route and the business model for online advertising is becoming ever more refined.
Going forward, we can expect the bar to be raised on affiliate marketing, with high-quality efforts driving out bad. Additionally, smart operators will shift their attention from trying to promote mass-market products, where margins are low and competition fierce, to selling in specialized markets where individual conversions are worth much more. Some of the top pay per lead affiliate programs are now taking the view that it’s better to pay well for high-quality referrals than to focus purely on volume.
Formalized Non-Hierarchical Teaching
Although it seems obvious, at least once somebody mentions it, the vast majority of practically valuable business information is transmitted not in organized seminars or briefings, but through casual encounters between two or more individuals. This applies not only to specific information but also skills and knowledge.
In fact, one study estimates that between 70% and 90% of learning takes place in this way. Some of the benefits of “social learning”, as it is called, are the temporary dissolution of organizational boundaries and higher levels of learner engagement.
Both online and offline courses already incorporate elements of social learning through informal interactions between students, public forums, and other means. In 2018, we can expect the theory and tools of social learning to develop well beyond what is currently available, including software intended specifically to facilitate it.
Just like “silo” became a dirty word when digital transformation came around, hoarding knowledge may soon be seen as the professional equivalent of refusing to pass the ball in team sports. As the methodology of social learning becomes more structured, companies that are willing to promote mentorships and lateral knowledge transfer can expect to see an improvement in efficiency similar to that which was achieved when databases started talking to each other.
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Photos provided by author