Technological development, thanks in part to an extraordinary vision for the future and a positively dizzying pace of innovation, continues to inspire reactions spanning the full spectrum of human emotion, yielding excitement and enthusiasm among the more optimistic segments of society while simultaneously provoking fear and angst among those with a more natural inclination toward cynicism.
At the risk of stating the obvious, technology brings change, and change necessitates some kind of adaptive response. In 1945’s The Mind at the End of its Tether, the famed English author and futurist H.G. Wells leveled a timeless declaration:
“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.”
Wells, who correctly predicted a future featuring airplanes, climate change, nuclear weaponry, satellite TV, space exploration, armored tanks, and the internet, may not have considered how technological development would eventually influence the field of marketing, yet the brilliant futurist’s declaration is particularly appropriate given the manner in which rapid technological innovation is profoundly altering the profession.
Technological innovation, for all the benefits proffered to clients, publishers, and other advertising networks has left the professionals occupying those marketing firms and in-house marketing departments wondering if they will soon be rendered obsolete. There are even those who believe recent technological developments have already succeeded in doing so.
Marketing automation and machine learning technologies, along with a host of other technological developments, have inspired a genuine existential crisis among marketers, and marketing departments have only two options to credibly consider: Adapt or perish.
The Far-Reaching Impact of Marketing Automation and Machine Learning
Among tech companies, it is only recently that digital marketing spending surpassed non-digital spending. In light of this development, it is only logical to conclude that such a shift in budgetary allocation would align more or less equally with the percentage of a marketing firm’s revenue generated from digital versus non-digital marketing efforts. This has not been the case.
With the development of marketing automation and machine learning technologies, companies are increasingly turning away from marketing firms or downsizing in-house marketing departments. Instead of hiring an outside firm or working with an in-house department dedicated solely to marketing, these organizations are now able to generate demand for products and services in a far more efficient and effective manner.
The impact of marketing automation technology is already quite apparent industry-wide. Machine learning, while already widely used in a wide variety of industries (including the marketing industry, of course), still remains in its infancy. Machine learning is currently being utilized to help organizations sift through mountains of collected data to recognize patterns and/or offer predictions culled from what would otherwise be an incomprehensible set of data.
Marketing Departments and the New Technological Challenges on the Horizon
As machine learning continues to evolve and becomes increasingly sophisticated, it will be able to do much more than simply identifying, for example, a qualified lead based on an organization’s specific lead-scoring system. In the not too distant future, it is easy to imagine organizations utilizing machine learning technologies to develop distinct marketing campaigns — including the actual writing of the marketing copy used by the campaign to specifically appeal to each segment of a company’s target audience.
With enough data at its disposal, machine-learning technologies will be able to accurately determine what an individual customer is thinking or feeling at any given moment, thereby making it possible to correctly predict future behavior. Having advance knowledge of what a customer will do has a number of obvious implications for the future of marketing, and companies will certainly benefit from the cost efficiencies made possible thanks to the development of machine learning technologies.
It is no surprise, then, that many marketing firms and departments have adopted a fatalistic view of the future. With the promise and potential of machine learning technology — not to mention a whole host of other technologies now visible on the horizon — the skill set held by marketing professionals could soon be rendered obsolete and far too costly by comparison.
“Adapt or Perish”: Technology’s Inexorable Imperative
Despite the fatalistic view adopted by a segment of the marketing profession, the inexorable imperative outlined by Wells so many years ago still features two distinct options. Marketing firms and departments that fail to adapt to an environment increasingly dominated by technological innovation will most certainly perish.
It is hardly a foregone conclusion, however, that marketing professionals will have nothing left to offer as new marketing technologies become increasingly sophisticated. To paraphrase Wells: Now as ever, marketing departments must adapt in ways that provide clear value to the client — the kind of value that cannot be provided by technology.
While some, as was the case with Wells, possess the ability to see the future with remarkable clarity, predictions for the future remain anything but certain. It was only a few years ago that there was near-universal agreement that e-books would soon eliminate any demand for newly published works to be printed on paper.
Despite the obvious threat posed by the e-book, based on the most recently available data bookstore revenue is up by 2 percent; e-book revenue declined by 11 percent during that same time. If marketing departments are to avoid a future in which they are ultimately consigned to antiquity, they must continually adapt and innovate at the pace of technological development while creating new ways to offer value to clients.