(The not so awaited) Marketing Automation Predictions for 2019

With 2019 well and truly underway and the swings and balances of the political and financial world how can we possibly think about predictions for the year ahead?

This month I was fortunate enough to catch up with Editor-in-chief of B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison, to talk about how we at JTF Marketing see the market and importantly what’s next.

We talked about how many marketers are still embarking on their Marketing Automation (MA) journeys and importantly are still figuring out strategy and tech stack. In addition, we considered how an education from industry experts and the media plays an important role in bringing everyone up to speed.

But here are a few predictions for how I think the MarTech industry will go in 2019:

1. We will remain with a shortage of expert Marketing Automation advisors and, importantly, those who go beyond just “marketing” and can truly grasp how to link business objectives with automated business processes.
2. The impact of marketing remains a tricky conversation with Marketers, collecting a tonne of data but not knowing how to utilise this to enhance, optimise, or pivot campaigns.
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and buzz words will be the justification for additional expenditure on Marketing Automation without a clear roadmap or maturity plan for full utilisation.
4. Adobe-Marketo acquisition has paved the way for MarTech vendors to begin consolidating in order to drive larger market shares and importantly lock out the smaller players commonly found in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe.

What do you think? For many of our clients I know they just want Marketing Automation vendors to iron out a few more bugs and ease delivery to free up internal resources’ time.

*The original article was published on 25th of  January 2018