Martech Trends for the 2020s – Part 2
Outside In continues its journey to explore Martech Trends for the 2020s in this Part-2 article, following from previous week’s piece here at:
A Quick Recap – The 5 Trends for 2020s Martech
1) “No Code” Citizen Creators
2) Platforms, Networks and Marketplaces
3) The Great App Explosion
4) From Big Data to Big Ops
5) Harmonizing Humans and Machines
Let’s now deep dive into each of these Trends and understand what it means for consumers and what it means for us Marketers…
1) “No Code” Citizen Creators
The essence of “no code” trend is (the availability of) software that empowers individuals and general business users to create things that previously only specialists could produce.
User Insight
Today’s “no code” tools give non-technical professionals the power to create websites, databases, workflows, integrations, mobile apps, web apps, chatbots, voice assistant skills, and more. This category of products is called “no code” because previously you had to be a developer programming with code to build any of these. This power to create isn’t limited to software development either. People who aren’t graphic designers use tools like Canva and Easil to produce their own creative assets. People who aren’t data scientists use tools such as Tableau and Obviously.ai to analyze large data sets and build predictive machine learning models. People without audio engineering skills use tools like Descript to produce podcasts, editing recordings like a wizard simply by typing some text
Marketer Insight
In martech, many marketers have adopted marketing automation and customer journey orchestration products without even realizing that architecting such sophisticated customer experiences would have required a team of software engineers to implement not too many years ago. Now it’s drag-and-drop.A representative sample of specialized products serving these use cases have been illustrated below:
GPT-3 API recently released by OpenAI is powering tools such as Snazzy.ai that generates Google Ads, Facebook Ads, landing pages, emails, blog posts, etc., as a remarkably proficient “robot copywriter” that anyone can direct on their behalf
Key Takeaways
The proliferation of “no code” tools will give non-specialist business users the ability to self-serve more of their needs immediately, instead of being constrained by the cost or availability of a specialist
“No code” capabilities aren’t limited to building software. All kinds of digital assets, apps, analyses, and workflows will be produced by non-specialists using tools designed to empower citizen creators
“No code” tools will abstract complex operations for marketers delivering automation and efficiencies. However, they will also multiply the number of moving pieces in a firm’s digital environment, increasing the need for platforms and software-based governance
Specialists will still be in high demand for applying their skills to more advanced and complex creative activities. They will leverage “no code” tools too, to accelerate their production process
Software, both commercial and custom, will increasingly expose its capabilities through APIs for “no code” tools to be able tap into that functionality for any workflow or customer experience built by a citizen creator (in marketing, a “marketing maker”)
Platforms
Software and hardware platforms have ushered in tremendous extensibility and remixability on top of standardized foundations — from early operating systems, such as Windows, to modern device platforms, such as iOS, Android, Amazon Alexa, and Philips Hue, to current SaaS platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, and Xero
Developers stand on the shoulders of giants to create specialized apps that inherit the capabilities of the platform upon which they’re built. Users of these platforms benefit from a spectacular variety of apps. They can choose ones that best suit their needs and preferences — or even make their own — while being assured of their interoperability around shared data models, operating workflows, and user interface standards. This platform pattern is also applied to content and campaigns, where foundational creative assets are designed to facilitate independent production of variations and localizations within a common marketing framework
Networks
A network is a group or system of interconnected people or things. The Internet itself is one giant network, and by connecting over 4.5 billion10 people on the planet, it has facilitated trillions of dollars in measurable transactions — and trillions more in personal and professional value-add. Within that mother-of-all-networks, the Internet contains millions of other networks, from social media juggernauts, such as Facebook, Twitter, and WeChat, to private collaborative networks inside organizations, using tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Within these networks, participants can connect, communicate, share content, and tap collective contributions of information. They form digital communities and affinity groups — and specialized subgroups within them. There’s often a fluidity to these networks that let them adapt and evolve
Metcalfe’s Law claims the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants — assuming compound benefit for each participant from everyone else in the network
Marketplaces
Marketplaces provide a managed environment for buyers and sellers to get matched with each other, conduct transactions, and coordinate the delivery of their goods or services. By validating sellers and buyers and enforcing rules for participation, marketplaces reduce risks for parties to do business without a direct relationship. Consumer marketplaces have blossomed on the Internet: Airbnb, Alibaba, Amazon (for third-party sellers), eBay, Etsy, Fiverr, Groupon, Houzz, Kickstarter, Uber, Upwork, Walmart, Wish, and many more. There are B2B and industrial marketplaces, such as Cargo.one for booking air cargo and Laserhub for sheet metal orders. Facebook, Google, and other ad exchanges run marketplaces for advertising, matching advertisers with audiences in real-time bidding for placements
Platforms, networks, and marketplaces can be business models, where a company monetizes them directly. But they can also be operating models, where a company leverages these digital structures to run their business more effectively. And they can be blended together
A brand can sell a hardware platform, tap their user network for community-based support and advocacy, and run a marketplace for apps and services offered around its products. An agency can provide their own proprietary apps on top of their clients’ marketing platforms — as a way of efficiently collaborating and securely sharing data — source panel insights from a consumer network owned by their holding company, and secure endorsements for localized campaigns through their own specialized influencer marketplace
By establishing centrally-managed platforms, networks, and marketplaces, organizations can enable greater decentralized adaptations, innovations, and dynamic optimization of resources. Leading martech companies will be platforms, networks, and marketplaces themselves. They will empower marketers to engage in other platforms, networks, and marketplaces. And they will give marketers the ability to create their own
Key Takeaways
In a digital world, brands and agencies are shifting from static, linear, and hierarchical business models and operating models to more dynamic structures and processes organized around platforms, networks, and marketplaces
Brands and agencies will participate in many marketplaces, networks, and platform ecosystems, but some of the most strategic opportunities will be in creating their own
Platforms thrive when they provide a common underlying architecture and governing principles that standardize data and operations across a high volume and wide variety of digital elements and interactions. Good platforms enable greater innovation and experimentation to blossom on their foundations independent of the core
Marketplaces thrive when they optimize matching of supply and demand and yet also provide trusted and reliable mechanisms to assure delivery and compliance in those transactions
The dynamics of the Ecosystem Economy will shape marketing strategy and operations, both inside and outside the firm, including collaborations between brands and agencies
3) The Great App Explosion
In a Worldwide IT Industry 2020 Predictions report published in 2019-20, IDC estimated that “over 500 million digital apps and services will be developed and deployed using cloud native approaches” by 2023. And, that by 2030, there will be billions and billions of apps in the world. This is The Great App Explosion. To get a sense of the scale of The Great App Explosion already underway, consider that two years ago there were already over 100 million software project repositories in GitHub. By 2030, there will be an estimated 45 million developers in the world. If we count apps built by “no code” tools it’s easy to appreciate how billions of apps can be created
By 2025, IDC estimates there will be 41.6 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices connected in the world, including wearables, sensors, appliances, vehicles, TVs, speakers, and more. Each of these hardware devices runs its own software apps on the “edge” of the cloud. Some are so tiny as to be considered not just micro-apps but nano-apps
The demand for apps is nearly unlimited. Marketers are constantly looking for innovations that will give them a competitive edge — a new tactic, a new channel, a new customer experience. They’re continually striving to optimize their operations with more specialized tools and digital services that are tailored to their needs
App platforms standardize data models, services, and user interfaces to create coherence and consistency across everything plugged into them. Think of your iPhone or Android smartphone and how effortless it is to add new apps. The B2B app platforms are not there yet, but in the decade ahead, they will be. This gives businesses the best of both worlds: unified digital infrastructure, anchored by stable app platforms, and near infinite means of innovating and differentiating through specialist apps — or custom apps they build themselves — layered on top of that foundation. Checkout the spectrum on SaaS Platforms and Apps below:
For brands and agencies, this appification of the world represents an unprecedented canvas for creativity. Customer experiences can be crafted across a myriad of digital touchpoints, a suite of apps and micro-apps all working in concert to amaze and delight. These richer brand experiences will begin earlier in the customer journey, as even ads become micro-apps that are capable of intelligence and interactivity. Indeed, the difference between an “ad” and a free, just in-time digital service beamed contextually to a device or media platform that a consumer is engaged with will be hard to distinguish. They will power interactive content and visual commerce everywhere
Key Takeaways
Software will continue to become easier and cheaper to create, and there will be more and more digital touch-points in people’s lives where it can be deployed. Customers will expect more app-like experiences from brands, in both consumer and B2B markets
The landscape of commercial martech tools will continue to grow, as major marketing platforms enable and expand their ecosystems of plug-and-play specialist apps
Agencies will have increasing opportunities to build their own martech apps for these marketing platforms as a way to collaborate more deeply with clients through their martech stacks and differentiate with new software-powered service offerings
The proliferation of connected devices and exponential growth in bandwidth will enable more marketing assets — including previously static advertising formats — to have some level of software intelligence and interactivity built in. This will inspire a whole new wave of advertising and marketing creativity
As marketing manages more and more software assets in its domain, orchestrating all these elements will require the combination of DevOps and RevOps practices and thinking in marketing operations, at both agencies and brands
4) From Big Data to Big Ops
Designing and delivering customer experiences in a digitally-native or digitally-transformed business is a function of an enormous number of apps, automations, bots, decision models, dynamic processes, workflows, skills, people and more — a myriad of human and software “actors” — that must all work in concert together. The effectiveness by which companies orchestrate all of this — the massive span of their digital operations — will be a major axis of competitive advantage
Key Takeaways
Big Data was a revolution for handling the enormous volume, variety, and velocity of data flowing through organizations today. Big Ops will be about managing the growing volume and variety of apps, automations, processes, and workflows operating in brands and agencies on top of that universe of data
Organizations that excel at distilling data into insights (data intelligence) and activating it in real-time in their operations (data reflexes) will achieve a competitive advantage
Marketers will need to become more data and ops literate as an integral part of designing and managing marketing campaigns & programs. Regulations & ethics will limit how much personal information is available; marketers will have to find creative ways to target & personalize
Data alliances and trusted data ecosystems will play an ever larger role in marketing operations — and will require greater governance for data regulation and compliance
Given the amplifying effects Big Ops with have on the data it processes, the challenges of identifying and resolving issues with data discrimination, data bias, and data ethics will become increasingly important for agencies and brands. New AI-based tools will emerge to address these concerns
5) Harmonizing Humans and Machines
Two skills that marketers will develop in this decade: model making and model breaking. Humans also decide when and where to deploy these models, setting the context in which they run. For multivariate testing of content, for instance, a human decides what content is going to be optimized and the parameters of variations, either providing explicit alternatives or setting boundaries on automatically generated ones. The human sets the goals for the optimization — a hierarchy of preferred actions and the characteristics of ideal customer conversions on them
Many of these human-led decisions are about connecting the dots across a number of different tactical automations in the service of a larger strategy. For instance, aligning the automation for ad spend optimization for a campaign with the automation for multivariate testing optimization on the landing pages for that campaign. The Great App Explosion will grow the total number of such tactical automations under the umbrella of ops, raising the importance of orchestration
AI-Augmented Strategy Will Emerge
Translating marketing strategy into automated big ops “programs” in such an environment will require expert human skill. And at the highest level, humans will continue to set overarching marketing strategy, synthesizing the myriad of the diverse inputs that go into its formation. Marketers will complement the raw algorithmic horsepower of machine learning with strategic, contextual, and integrative thinking. Learning how to apply those talents effectively with a continuous wave of new technologies in the mix will be an important part of marketing development moving forward
Machine learning tools will increasingly suggest insights, interpret context, and apply meaning, putting more information at a marketer’s fingertips with which to inform strategy and decisions. The sophistication of these tools on top of AI-based models will continue to widen in scope, giving marketers greater understanding of larger and more diverse sets of data
Key Takeaways
AI will not eliminate the need for humans in marketing in this decade. However, AI will shift the allocation of marketers’ time to higher-level work on strategy, innovation, creativity, collaboration, and deeper customer empathy and understanding
Most AI applications in marketing will leverage machine learning with relatively narrowly defined models that are highly dependent on the data fed into them. It will be a human responsibility to oversee those models and the data sources they rely on
Marketers will have to continually embrace and learn new AI-powered tools that expand their capabilities. This harmonization of human strengths and talents with sophisticated software tools will usher in the era of the “augmented marketer”
Marketers won’t be the only ones leveraging AI. The age of the “augmented customer” will change marketing dynamics, as consumers and business buyers adopt more and more advanced software to optimize their purchases and engagements with brands
Increasingly, brands and agencies will implement strategies for marketing to machines — engaging with autonomous software agents operating on behalf of customers through data and APIs — to support “bot commerce”
In Conclusion
Each of these trends is already emerging in practice today. But each of them will grow exponentially in the years ahead. Collectively, they will reshape marketing disciplines in profound and wondrous ways. Martech is not to be viewed as a category of products and/or solutions. This is about martech as a strategic and management “operating system” by which brands and agencies will run marketing in an ever more digital and hyper-connected world
Software is the “star stuff” within all five of these martech trends. And it’s through the fluidity of software connected in the cloud that they feed into one another, amplifying their effects. Yet above this panoply of software, marketers will remain firmly in control of their destiny and the outcomes of their work
References and Sources
1) Salesforce State of Marketing Report
2) WPP Report – Martech 2030