With every industrial revolution throughout history, marketing has undergone a stark transformation to match the change in demands. And with yet another industrial revolution already upon us, it is only logical to assume that marketing will change again in the next few years to come. The first legs of the transformation are already visible. Well into 2020, social media and search engine optimisation are gradually losing their previous vigour at a time when TV advertisement spending is going down and digital spending is going up. Trends decide what skills you will need to acquire to make your career in marketing. Trends have the last say when companies visit your college to acquire talent that will help them to get ready for the future that is about to come.

So, here are 4 upcoming marketing trends that you should look out for as a soon-to-be PGDM graduate. Craft your CV according to these points and be ready for the placement session.

1. AI-driven marketing decisions

Take the example of a consumer who books an economy class flight ticket, carries an iPhone, drives a Maruti Swift and yet has a fascination for Rolex watches. Is this customer more likely to buy premium products or shops around for cheaper alternatives? How will you direct this person to your marketing funnel? You might use your critical thinking and say that this customer travels cheap but possesses valuable items but multiply that example with a thousand such customers with a thousand different tastes. This is where AI can win you the game. And this is why the top PGDM college in Delhi is focusing on an AI-based curriculum as the future lies there. With more data being available, marketing will soon cross the human capacity.

2. Virtual Reality will change the retail game

The third decade of the 21^st century is the time for retail stores to give stiff competition to e-commerce. And their ace of the sleeve is going to be virtual reality. Smartphone maker Vivo has already transformed one of its retail stores into a VR extravaganza where customers can not only look at their collection of phones but use VR to game, travel, experience and enjoy. More brands are bound to join the bandwagon and companies will want to hire executives who understand the VR needs. You will have to present your company’s message in a way that customers can experience rather than simply seeing. Of course, you do not have to design the graphics yourself. But be sure to acquire enough VR knowledge to be able to direct the technical team.

3. Data will become even more dominant

In the best MBA/PGDM colleges in Delhi, you will hear terms like deep personalisation or personalised marketing. Data will pave the way for these to seep into the marketing world. Future marketing experts will have to play with more data. Analytics will form their regular job where data will decide everything, starting from where to put a product in a supermarket to what to post in the story of the official Instagram handle. And if you are thinking that data is already doing these things, take a step further and imagine posting your ad on a platform like Amazon that has a fully-autonomous supermarket in America where the mobile phone decides what the customer might want next. Getting your advertisement there will require you to dig and visualise data every day, closely helped by AI and ML.

4. Voice Search will be a channel soon

The revolution of the Internet of Things is already here. Our homes are connected to the internet through products like Google Home and Amazon Echo. And our cars are connected through Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Speculations are being made that voice assistants can help shoppers find alternatives if their favourite one has run out of supply or direct a visitor to a similar café like home in a new city. This is certainly a new channel of marketing and will soon have its influence. Certainly, you cannot run an advertisement over voice assistants like a podcast. You will have to design so that the bot picks you while searching for alternatives. That means designing content for ads and landing pages with context in mind rather than our-product-is-the-best strategy.

EMPI, one of the top B-schools in the pgdm colleges in delhi, has an AI-infused marketing curriculum in its PGDM course. You are naturally directed down the path of upcoming marketing trends and handed skills to become employable on those lines. Just like other niches, marketing is becoming technical too and you cannot find success with the archaic rules. Sure, the basics are needed. But the concepts have to modify themselves to encapsulate modern demands. To be successful in the post-digital revolution world, EMPI is your stepping stone.