Marketing Trends in 2018: Execs Double Down on Content and Worry About AI

The top marketing trends in 2018 are in: we surveyed 500 executives and found that leaders in the industry are making bold digital strides like increasing content spend and doubling down on technology — but many are worried about the advent of AI.

Get a closer look at the top marketing trends in 2018 here:

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Compared to last year, organic search still reigns as the top channel, and many execs use quite a few dashboards to keep tabs on their performance. But nobody knows how current AI leader Google’s new machine learning experiments will impact search, or the digital marketing world at large.

Whatever happens, it’s clear that marketing execs are looking for insights over data in an ever-growing content marketing landscape.

Execs Gear Up for More Content Investment in 2018

76% of executives plan to increase their content marketing initiatives in 2018, compared to 60% for SEO. This makes sense, given that early-stage content is shown to increase likelihood of purchase by 131%.

Nearly a Third of Teams Spend Big on MarTech

28% of executives spend $100k+ on marketing technology, with 4% breaking the $1M mark. The largest portion of marketing executives spent between 6k-20k on marketing technology in 2017.

And Two Thirds Are Planning to Spend More

One of the top marketing trends in 2018 we found was a considerable readiness to invest more in MarTech. 68% of execs plan to increase spend on marketing technology in 2018.

Over A Third of Digital Marketing Leaders Feel Unprepared for AI

34% of executives say AI is the marketing trend they feel least prepared for. Considering that a majority of marketers in retail are already using artificial intelligence, this is likely to only become more important to get a grip on as the year progresses.

A Majority of Executives Are Overwhelmed by Data

59% of execs use 2-5 dashboards to view their digital marketing performance, but a handful use 10-20 or more. So it’s no surprise that 56% say they feel “overwhelmed” by the amount of data in their marketing technologies.

Want more insights into executive strategies, top trends, and pressing challenges? Download our full report on the marketing and technology plans of 500 execs to find out more.

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