How will marketing strategy change in the next five years? That’s the question Gigya tries to answer in its new white paper, “5 Ways Marketing Will Change in the Next 5 Years.” Three words dominate Gigya’s predictions—data, permission, and personalization.
There are real statistics that show how the focus of marketing in recent years has already shifted to these three strategic imperatives, and that shift will dominate the next five years. Gigya shares the following statistics to back up its predictions:
- The big data market will grow at an annual rate of 31.7% through 2016, which is seven times higher than the overall growth rate for information and communications technology. (via International Data Corp.)
- An estimated 2.2 million terabytes of new data are created each day (via Autonomy)
- 90% of big data is unstructured, “human information” from Twitter updates, Facebook posts, website clicks, and so on.
- Data collection volume increased in 2012 from an average of 10 collection events per page to 50. That’s a 400% increase. (via Krux)
- 40% of users decide not to log into a website or app using their social network accounts due to concerns about how their personal information will be used.
With those statistics in mind, here are the five predictions Gigya offers in its white paper for the next five years in marketing strategy:
- Massive data collection across multiple touch points becomes standard.
- Marketers get a firmer grip on the data they manage.
- Social media grows into big data.
- Permission marketing becomes the norm.
- Programmatic marketing ends the age of generalizations.
For marketing experts and practitioners, these predictions probably don’t come as much of a surprise. Big data, mobile, and personalization have been the big buzz topics for more than the past 12 months and will only continue to grow in importance. I think the most interesting part of the white paper is within the section about the need for marketers to get a “firmer grip” on the data they manage.
The white paper suggests the need for “modern dynamic databases equipped to handle large, varied datasets,” which data scientists and data analysts need to “mine, synthesize, and convert into actionable insights.” Those are two very different parts of the big data puzzle, and each deserves attention. The tools are meaningless if you don’t have the expertise to turn a massive amount of data into something useful. Similarly, the brightest minds can’t do much if they can’t collect and crunch the data in the ways they require to extract the actionable information.
What do you think about Gigya’s predictions for marketing strategy in the next five years? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: Ilker
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
I think that there will be too much data to crunch – cameras will be everywhere, analyzing our every move, tracking our locations, our conversations and emails, in order to give us customized ads at all times. It’ll be too much data for a person to filter and extrapolate meaning – a lot of the the processes will be automated.