Digitization brings us closer to new trends at ever shorter intervals that overwhelm us humans both at work and at home with buzzwords like Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0, smart homes, autonomous driving or artificial intelligence (AI). What we shouldn’t forget is that these trendy technologies are supposed to make people’s hard everyday lives more comfortable.

When Gutenberg went from manual copying of texts to printing in the 15th century, we talk about automation that set a media distribution network rolling. Not much has happened since then. Only recently has the digital transformation developed exponentially and got to grips with recurring work processes, making so-called routine or “monkey” work a commodity and automation of such assignments a factor for future competitiveness.

Marketing technology can do much more than just create a system, structure and efficiency for data-based, metric marketing. Anyone who deals with the daily growing number of suppliers in the MarTech sector will come across real gems here and there that can give companies the decisive turning point for traditional value chains.

The fact is that the decisive impulse always comes from marketing because this is where the knowledge about customers and their insights lies. This human capital can now be enriched excellently and profitably with innovations from the global MarTech industry. Here and there, marketing technology even open ups potential for disruption for entire industries and traditional business models.

For instance, GPT-2 can be seen as a pioneer in AI-assisted content creation. In particular, highly individual approaches are efficiently possible through such marketing technologies. The automatically initiated dialog at the beginning of an individual customer journey will disrupt the advantages of human acquisition. Not entirely – but in large parts – and programmatic placement will not be limited to digital advertising inventory. The first providers are already trying their hand at programmatic purchasing of print ads. This will change the traditional business model of the media and completely disrupt that of the media agencies. At the latest when a blockchain-based smart contracting has completely dissolved the fog of conditions.

Shopping bots are becoming a real challenge in marketing because tomorrow’s digital agents will be immune to marketing tactics. Here it is important to find new mechanics with MarTech before you only produce expenses instead of conversion with traditional marketing.

Dynamic pricing is not just reserved for Amazon. MarTech providers are already automating the pricing strategy of some start-ups with individually adapted algorithms. Even though the blockchain is still much smiled at in marketing, which is quite understandable in the status quo, the topic of “smart contracting” will particularly disrupt industries whose core element is “trust”.

Digital products and the Internet of Things (IoT) will explode the number of digital touchpoints. This is where the latest generation of MarTech shows its strengths. With the right interfaces to connected IoT devices, far more detailed and timely information on customer behavior and preferences can be provided than was previously possible. With Nest, Google can already determine the heat consumption of individual households quite clearly and, above all, in real time. An insight that can become a real disadvantage for existing energy providers.

And finally, artificial intelligence can optimize the functional aspects of a product design, and thus increase the variety of products that a brand can offer. And that has nothing to do with automated line extenders. Rather, marketers need to have a plan for knowing what products they offer and what features are really in demand. The rest is then “only” a question of marketing technology for automation and far more than just a digital factor for future competitiveness. Anyone who delves deeper is sure to find one or the other turning point for disruptive marketing.

By Daniela La Marca