Marketers are in the midst of unprecedented changes, fuelled by business technology and— just as powerfully—by changing consumer expectations. When surveyed about the future, they describe a professional work environment very different from the one they occupy today. For starters, marketers are predicting huge changes ahead in the kinds of tools they will use and the skills they will need to do their jobs.
Machine learning, sophisticated analytics, and neuromarketing are seen as the most important skills in the marketing department in 2025, and the tools that enable these will sit on top of the shopping list. The corollary is that many current activities such as email marketing, social media marketing, and digital media marketing are expected to decrease—in some cases, dramatically. While the tools marketers use and the skills they need will change, the core focus will not.
Customer lifetime value will replace customer retention as the top priority, though retention remains in second place. The big mover is marketing-sourced revenue, which jumps from sixth today to 2025: A Marketer’s Look Ahead third. Pipeline generation drops out of the top three altogether. The really big change between now and the world of seven years in the future concerns lead generation.
Across the board, marketers believe this will be much less of a priority.
Among large companies, the drop is from 18% to 6%, for medium companies from 21% to 6%, and in smaller companies (who presumably expect to be bigger companies by then) the proportion of marketers who say it will be a top priority craters—dropping from 26% to 9%. That decline represents one of the biggest changes in the survey