Forrester reveals top emerging tech B2B and B2C marketers should watch
- 12 April, 2017 10:36
B2B and B2C marketers serious about remaining competitive in the future need to look out for a series of emerging tech in the next three to five years, new research from Forrester found.
Speaking to analysts and interviewing experts globally, Forrester’s reports, Top Emerging Technologies for B2B Marketers and Top Emerging Technologies for B2C Marketers, revealed the latest data, insights, engagement, and connected customer offerings to watch in the next three to five years.
From a B2B perspective, the research revealed attribution, content intelligence, and customer data platform technologies will help B2B marketing become insights-driven. Content intelligence also topped insights-driven tech for B2C marketers, along with customer journey analytics, and enterprise preference management technologies.
Top 5 engagement technologies
Forrester identified five engagement technologies that also help B2B marketers improve how firms connect customers and offerings. These are advocacy platforms, intelligent agents, personalised video, programmatic advertising solutions, and virtual and augmented reality.
Meanwhile for B2C marketers, the research showed virtual and augmented reality will enable more effective customer experiences, along with creative advertising technology, embedded advertising, intelligent agents and mobile engagement automation.
AI and the connected customer
AI, identity resolution and the Internet of Things (IoT) surfaced as the top three enabling technologies for both B2B and B2C marketers to help organisations become connected and meet the rapidly evolving needs and preferences of today’s customer.
According to the research, vendors of B2B marketing solutions are already starting to weave AI technologies into their offerings to enable a wide range of use cases, from account selection to content personalisation and ad placement.
For B2C marketers, the research showed AI-powered marketing solutions driving efficiency by automating processes and surfacing insights in the short term. In the longer term, AI-powered marketing solutions will enable contextual marketing and drive lift in marketing KPIs by autonomously creating and delivering customer interactions.
The identify resolution trend
B2B marketers are also beginning to see identity resolution as an important enabler for complete measurement, accurate targeting, relevant personalisation and channel/device-appropriate interactions, the research revealed.
Both B2B and B2C marketers increasingly see identity resolution as the fundamental enabler for complete measurement, accurate targeting, relevant personalisation, and delivery of interactions in the right channel and device.
This means legacy approaches of storing fragmented customer identities at the channel or application level will soon be replaced by processed of integrating identifiers across available touchpoints and devices with behavior, transaction, and contextual information into an addressable customer profile.
IoT and smartphone adoption
And while IoT is still an emerging technology overall, the research showed its adoption is more advanced among B2B enterprises than it is among consumer-facing brands. For B2C brands, the emergence of smart objects and packaging will give B2C brands opportunities to enter new territory and deliver increasingly contextualised experiences on top of products, the report showed. IoT will also enable marketers to listen to their customers wherever they are, analyse their real behaviors, create more frequent and intimate consumer interactions, differentiate their customer experiences, and even build new offerings and business models.
Importantly, the research confirmed over the next five to 10 years, smartphones will remain the primary interface to enable and control connected experiences and serve as a key driver of more personalised experiences across multiple connected environments. And in order deliver great IoT-powered experiences, B2C marketers must act on data, keep control of the customer relationship, move from products to experiences, and elevate privacy and security to a business imperative.
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