According to the new Gartner’s study (a major consulting and research company specializing in IT studies), generative AI is becoming a key factor in determining the future of marketing for businesses. It opens up new opportunities to personalize offers, automate processes, and improve user experience. However, with this come new challenges related to data privacy and the need to adapt to rapidly changing technologies.
Check out our overview of the Gartner’s digital marketing trends and our expert opinion on how it changes the portrait of the Digital Marketing Director.
Digital marketing trends 2024: Gartner’s opinion
AI adoption is accelerating. The first and the foremost. Businesses across many industries experiment with AI for marketing, enterprise applications, developing and testing new ideas and tools, content creation.
The next one. Data privacy creates new challenges — an unstable regulatory environment hinders innovation. Issues on ethics of handling customer data are about to become a hot topic, and the process of user identification is on the verge of moving towards more transparent regulation.
And give a stage to super-apps — the next trend. These are mobile/web applications that provide multiple services including payment and instant messaging in one place.
They are now becoming increasingly popular due to high user expectations and allow you to simplify and improve your digital experience or combine multiple applications into one. Great thing to do!
And what exactly do all these trends mean for marketers?
- Marketers are pressed now to do more jobs with fewer costs. This, of course, conflicts with their desire to gain a complete understanding of customers’ preferences, changing behavior and CX — for better results, in other words.
- Generative AI gives a start to the Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and significantly changes the line of work for this year and beyond.
- Investment in managing and integrating customer data is increasing, as the channels (that marketers use to attract and retain customers) expand.
Technologies in marketing: Be-EXEC observation
- AR/VR technologies are becoming increasingly popular, and many companies are introducing them into their creative projects to attract attention (just remember Apple’s VR glasses).
- AI helps to make offers more individual and targeted for each user, which increases the percentage of effectiveness of marketing actions.
- Companies are paying more attention to retaining users and improving their experience. Business owners create special departments responsible for customer interaction (CX, customer experience) and customer retention. They use omnichannel communication for different target audiences, research their users from all angles, develop loyalty programs, and implement other tools to ensure their customers remain loyal to the company, continue to use its products, services and purchase goods and services.
Digital Marketing Director portrait in 2024: Be EXEC review
Marketing is no longer an area where large budgets can be spent on unpredictable results.
In 2024, really successful businesses are looking for Digital Marketing Directors who can build a strong system with realistic outcomes and strong delivery.
We’ve already been working in the executive search for 8 years and have fulfilled dozens of marketing projects for hiring CMOs, Digital Directors, and Heads of Marketing, so we are able to see the difference between the previous years and now, when AI is the taking the leading position, and we see that their competencies for large businesses are:
- Digital Marketing Directors are highly qualified strategists with an in-depth understanding of digital technologies and marketing tools. A must-have is the ability to quickly adapt and change strategies in response to new trends and opportunities.
- The Digital Marketing Director is now not only a creative person but also a data analyst (practically a mathematician — it’s true!), who can effectively work with accurate data. Should we mention that they have to develop in his field as well?
- Technical expertise and a deep understanding of digital technologies are essential for running successful digital campaigns: analytics, marketing automation, CRM systems, SEO, SEM, SMM, content marketing.
To sum up
Digital marketing is changing at high speed and we all should keep track of innovations happening so fast.
Our clients often come with requests to find competitive C-level talents for digital marketing, and we help this happen by bearing in mind all the trends and competencies we’ve mentioned in this article. Hope it was useful for you.
As soon as you need a perfect Digital Marketing Director — drop us a line, and we’ll be glad to help: https://be-exec.com/.
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