Marketing Platforms and Human Behavior

Can marketing ever be automated?

The marketing of marketing technology fills our minds with the idea that it can be streamlined and automated.   However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it can never be a hands-free process.   Consider the issues with email marketing where list decay, declining click thru rates, and better filters result in a constant battle to just stay even, never mind improving things. 

Like Sisyphus, we continue to believe we're making progress only to find up we are further behind.

To succeed at our jobs as marketers, which in my mind is about influencing choice, suggests we would be better off if we focused on consumer behavior.   We need to garner insights, understand content consumption habits, and anticipate the path to purchase.   Individually the verbs "garner, understand, and anticipate" don't strike me as things that can be automated very well.  And the combination of the three would be a daunting task indeed. 

The questions we should be constantly considering include:

• What would be of interest right now?
• How can we alter the probability of choosing us?
• What can we do to remove friction along the decision path?