Predictions 2018: AI and ML Will Bring CMOs Closer to Their Goals, According to The Panel at the Growth Marketing Conference 

The role of the CMO is constantly evolving. According to a report by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and Deloitte entitled ‘The CMO shift to gaining business lift’ the role of the CMO now includes him or her functioning as a growth driver, change agent and customer experience advocate. Nearly 70 percent of more than 200 participants in the international study say there is a clear mandate or high level of expectation among their senior management teams and board members for marketing to be the growth driver and business value creator in their organizations.

However, while they have high aspirations in this area, many CMOs surveyed appear to be struggling to embrace integrated data-driven analytics in order to embark on a relentless pursuit of revenue, better returns, and more profitable and enduring customer relationships.

We spoke to growth marketing experts and speakers who conducted workshops at Growth Marketing Conference to find out what they expect from the coming year.

Ada Chen Rekhi, Founder & COO at Notejoy: There are certain marketing channels that are incredibly specialized like paid marketing, email marketing, and SEO where a world-class practitioner is worth their weight in gold. As growth marketing matures, I think we’ll see less generalized ‘growth marketing’ roles in teams and more focus on building teams with channel experts.

Brandon Redlinger, Director of Growth at Engagio: The majority of companies will get growth wrong. Instead of focusing on “how can we build a better product and deliver more value to customers,” the focus will remain internal. They’ll still be trying to figure out “how do we get more money from our customers?” The allure of VC money and front page headlines that our society so prizes are only distractions. As a consequence, they will miss the real revenue opportunity. However, I’m very bullish on the growth marketing movement in the long run. I think companies will wise-up. The smartest companies will re-think roles, responsibilities, and relationships of the growth marketers, and they will be given more responsibility for the customer experience.

Hana Abaza, Head of Marketing at Shopify: I think it’s never been harder to move the needle. It’ll be less about tactics and hacks and more about sustainability and actually delivering something your audience wants.

Read More: Metrics That Every Growth Marketer Must Measure

Oli Gardner, co-founder of Unbounce: Machine learning and AI will create smarter systems. If they are exposed via APIs that will empower the growth marketer even greater acceleration and experimentation potential.

Companies and people to look out for

Ada: I am always watching companies with large consumer audiences like Facebook, LinkedIn, Uber because I know they have the resources and traffic to run a large volume of tests and are deeply quantitative in their approach. This means that whatever they roll out to the mainstream audience has generally been well-tested and is an intentional change.

Brandon: I don’t tend to watch companies as much as I watch people. I pay attention to the companies they go to and the projects they work on – that gives you a lot of insight into the challenges they’re thinking about and why. Some of the growth marketers that I follow are Andy Johns, Andrew Chen, Casey Winters, Brian Balfour and Morgan Brown.

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