Good marketer knows what you will want in 5 years: What qualities are important for a marketer and how will this profession change due to AI?

There is a misconception in society that marketing is about creativity. But Hexact co-founder and business development director Armen Avag Avagyan is sure that this is not the case. Marketing, in his opinion, is one of the basic functions of business, and its main goal is to make money.

“Marketing is not about creativity at all. Marketing is about money, about how to make money,” he noted in an interview with NEWS.am Tech.

In his opinion, marketing is based on numbers, algorithms and formulas, and if a person does not like working with numbers and data, then he will not be a good marketer.

“For the first four years of my career – and I’ve been in this field for more than 15 years – I only saw Excel files, worked only with data. I saw no clients, no content, no advertising. Only numbers. Because the secret of money lies in the numbers. You have to dig through a lot of ground to find one diamond. But this diamond, if found, can then bring you profit for five years,” the specialist said.

Modern technologies, in particular artificial intelligence, can really help in working with huge amounts of data. However, there are several important qualities that a good marketer must have that cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence.

The first, according to Avagyan, is curiosity.

“The question “why” should be of more interest than the question “what” and other questions. “What did you buy?”, “Where did you go?” — the answers to these questions should interest me less than the answers to questions like “why did you buy this?”, “why do you drink Cola?”, “why do you eat chocolate?” The money lies in the answers to the “why” questions. From the “why” you will create an insight, from the insight you will create a campaign, and the campaign will bring in money,” the specialist noted.

The second quality that is important for a marketer is the ability to “see the future”: AI, despite advanced data analysis capabilities, does not yet possess this skill – what is needed here is a human instinct and understanding.

Brand positioning, as Avagyan explained, is working not with today’s consumer, but with a consumer from the future: marketing campaigns are aimed at ensuring that people in the future – in three years, in five years – have a certain impression, a certain opinion about the brand.

“This means that I am now determining my position in five years. It also means that now I am not targeting the consumer of today, but the consumer of the future, who they will be in five years. This means that I must understand what the world will be like, what the market will be like in five years, what my consumer will need in five years, and from today I must begin to position myself there, in that future.”

What other qualities does a good marketer need? Will AI be able to replace marketers? How will new technologies change the profession? All about this you can watch in this interview (in Armenian) with NEWS.am Tech with Armen Avag Avagyan.