If you look at the modern marketing landscape, there are a lot of competitors fighting for their slice of the pie.

More than ever, marketing is about standing out and offering a point of difference. But this doesn’t mean simply mean change for the sake of it.

Marketo, an Adobe company, has gathered 10 leading marketers from across the globe to share their tips and predictions for marketing in 2020 and beyond.

You can download the ebook here.

Marketing Insider Group CEO Michael Brenner believes that despite the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning in recent years, it is the innately human trait empathy that will serve as a  significant marketing differentiator for the upcoming decade.

“The paradox of today’s data-driven, AI-driven marketing is that despite a large number of channels that provide information and customer service, consumers are craving more human experiences,” he says.

With 75 per cent of buyers now staying loyal to the brands that offer human interaction over automated digital experiences, empathy now serves as a way to boost the bottom line.

Adobe Experience Cloud global head of commercial marketing Gurdeep Dhillon also forecasts empathy to take on a significant role in the coming years.

Dhillon, however, believes empathy will take shape in the removal of integrated marketing campaigns.

“People don’t binge watch marketing campaigns like they do Netflix shows. It’s more like YouTube than Netflix. It’s about micro-moments that matter, with content that matters,” Dhillon says.

“The most successful marketers over the next five years will be the ones that build for the micromoments that matter the most to their audience.”

The value of empathy – and emotion in marketing generally – is also highlighted by marketing consultant Katie Martell, who points to the growing distrust of consumers towards brands.

With 70 per cent of consumers now sceptical of advertising and 42 per cent distrusting brands, ‘values-based’ advertising serves as a way for brands to build customer relationships.

However, Martell warns this has the potential to backfire.

“The next five years will see more rainbow-pandering, faux-feminism, femvertising, wokewashing, and other virtue-hustling by marketers. Even if these efforts are well-intentioned, they mask the real work that needs to be done,” she says.

“We cannot solve problems that we cannot see or understand clearly. Insincere values-based marketing campaigns do nothing for the movements they are pandering to, while introducing untenable risk for the business.”

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