At KSV, we spend a lot of time thinking about the energy company of the future.
What will it look like? What will the services be? Who will the major players be?
In fact, we’ve gone out and talked to consumers about what they think and who they’d trust. And we’ve helped our clients think about how to deal with the answers to these questions.
But that’s not the only future we spend time thinking about.
In fact, there are amazing things happening in the world of marketing technology. And lately, we’ve been spending a lot of time asking ourselves: What is the agency of the future?
What services, products, and new technologies should we be offering, building, and getting smarter about?
So we asked our clients, and some luminaries in our own field, what they needed the most help with and where they thought we should focus.
Here are five technologies we’ll be focused on for 2019.
1. Voice assistants: Voice is changing the way that consumers interact with brands. In fact, it might be one of the biggest opportunities you have to connect with consumers in a meaningful way. We have a pretty big announcement coming on the voice front in the next month, but for now we’ll leave you with a couple of stats and a question.
- 89 percent of people with voice assistants talk to them every day.
- By 2020, 50 percent of all internet searches will be voice searches.
And so, we ask you, are you ready for voice? Being ready is more than just having content out there. It’s having specific, conversational content that knows the questions your customers might ask and is ready to work with multiple voice assistants that are all driven by different types of code. No small task. If you aren’t thinking about voice yet, you absolutely should be. So stay tuned. Or better yet, reach out and we’ll tell you what we’ve got up our sleeve.
2. AI marketing integration: Artificial intelligence (AI) integration is no small undertaking, but the rewards you can reap are big. The Salesforce State of Marketing Annual Report notes that 57 percent of marketers using AI already say it’s absolutely or very essential in helping increase touch points with customers and prospects. Salesforce also points out that marketers expect AI use to grow by 53 percent over the next two years.
3. Data visualization and storytelling: Energy companies are often data rich and insight poor, and actually communicating the insights they do have is a feat unto itself. And yet, maximizing the potential of that data and then using it to drive organizational change and new product development is crucial to the evolution of the energy sector. At KSV, we’ve doubled down on this skill set by building out a team of experts in this discipline, and we’re already putting them to work for our clients. Ask us about it.
4. Attribution platforms: What is exactly driving results? It’s frustrating that such a seemingly simple question can be so difficult to answer, but the art and science of attribution has long been a challenge for marketers, who have tried for years to avoid the “last click” mentality and oversimplification of the discipline. Well, we’re unlocking the secrets and building out a tech stack that allows us to get closer to true attribution—that is, what is actually working to drive results for our clients. We’re using our in-house data team (see #3) to build models on energy savings and the marketing activities, channels and messages that can be directly connected to them, in order to predict future revenue opportunities and areas of growth for our clients in a way that effectively connects to their business objectives.
5. Marketing Automation Optimization: It’s insane that we’re still talking about this, but almost every client we get has a CRM system that is underperforming at best, and flat-out broken in many cases. So, we’re growing the ways we can help our clients optimize their platforms, with a major focus on Salesforce and the challenges it can present to an organization.
Want to hear more about any of these topics? Struggling with how to move forward in implementing a solution? Thinking about your next big step forward in 2019?
Let’s talk.