The marketing landscape has seen a tremendous shift in the last five years, largely due to data aggregation, and 2018 will be no different as communicators continue to gain a greater and increasingly granular understanding of customers.
Marketers have become proficient in gathering performance and consumer data through a wide variety of online experiences. These insights have enabled organizations to provide more relevant content throughout every stage of the sales funnel -- from the awareness stage all the way to the conversion stage. In the past, audience data metrics, informed by Google and Facebook analytics, could be applied effectively in organic social media content. But the days of free content are in the past as the industry has moved to a pay-to-play approach to reaching consumers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2017/11/28/priorities-for-marketers-in-2018-refining-the-customer-experience/
