It’s interesting to see some predictions from Spear Marketing Group on which types of technology U.S. B2B marketers expect to find important this year and next, as well as which they expect to see ROI gains from (all as reported by eMarketer). In short, automation is looking good — and so, too, is content marketing and its close cousin, SEO. Could there be a trend here of the three overlapping?
Across the multiple technologies available, it looks like predictive analytics and Big Data are the only niches that will grow in importance among surveyed marketers next year. However, neither gets close to the top billing ascribed to content marketing, SEO and marketing automation. Even CRM sees a massive dip in importance over the next 18 months, as does social media, leaving the aforementioned three amigos way ahead.
It’s always risky to read too much into figures, and adding two and two together to get five, but given the current high rate of ad blocking that is coming between consumers and display, there will clearly be a need to be a shift to more ad dollars being put into content marketing. This is likely to be a no-brainer for B2B marketers who clearly have content marketing and SEO at the top of their radars.
