Discovering top MarTech trends that are defining marketing practices

The synergy between marketing and technology is becoming ever more important. Today martech plays a pivotal role in automating processes and making marketing easier for businesses. The global martech spending in 2021 was around $344.8 billion, a figure that demonstrates the effectiveness of martech in almost every organisation.

Martech has witnessed significant growth across international markets, which has been accelerated by the shift in consumer behaviour due to the global pandemic.

At Hypothesis, we realise that to meet the constantly changing customer expectations and stay ahead of the curve, marketers need to embrace martech in their marketing ecosystem more aggressively than ever.

Let’s drive into the key trends in martech that all marketers should be aware of.

Key trends in MarTech landscape

Third-party cookie apocalypse

For years, brands have been using cookies and ad tracking tools to collect data to reach new leads and follow up on existing prospects and customers. But companies like Google announcing the phase-out of 3rd party cookies has pushed brands towards an "owned-data-first" strategy.

Using first-party cookies, marketers can identify the visitor's behavior as long as they are on their website, including the user journey, the number of website visits, and other fundamental metrics. However, marketers can't access data related to their visitor's behavior on other websites that aren't affiliated with their domain.

AI-based marketing

The more you know about your customers, the better you can drive conversion and retain them. But there lies a constant challenge to capture real-time customers' behaviors and needs and draw meaningful insights. AI has the capability to analyze huge amounts of data for behavioral patterns of consumers and predict future trends. Using machine learning and deep learning algorithms, marketers can seamlessly gather, analyze, and integrate key data into their strategies and craft personalized messages to customers at every stage of the marketing funnel.

Marketing with augmented and virtual reality

As more and more competitors enter the industry, the challenge to stand out has also increased. And with the global outbreak of COVID-19, the overall marketing dynamic between brands and customers has changed. Brands are now investing heavily in AR/VR marketing to engage with customers and encourage conversion in unique ways.

Brands like IKEA are now offering virtual shopping experiences to bring their customers closer.

Cosmetic brand, Sephora, uses augmented reality to remove fiction from purchasing.

With the world moving online, replacing physical experiences with digital ones is paramount for brands to remain relevant and AR/VR provides the perfect means to do that.

Human-chatbot interaction

Recent ML and AI advancements mean chatbots are getting more innovative in conversation and marketers are using chatbots to give their customers a personalized user experience. These chatbots are capable of keeping your audience engaged with genuine conversation and during these conversations, they gather data based on users' characteristics and preferences. These insights, when clubbed with analytics data, can give marketers the right amount of customer details to enhance and augment their marketing strategy with exceptional results.

Voice-technology in marketing

When one talks about voice technology, the first thing that comes to our minds are Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri. But voice technology is constantly evolving and has made its way into marketing.

As people like communicating through speech, marketers rely on voice channels to build immersive consumer experiences. Brands like Estée Lauder and Johnnie Walker have already started building relationships with consumers through interactive voice experiences.

Another facet of voice technology in marketing is that voice searches now impact SEO. Content marketers will have to evolve and adapt to this new technology and incorporate it into their marketing strategies.