As a marketer or a business owner in today's digital world, nothing is more important than forecasting. Knowing the marketing industry, the trends, and the issues that you will face gives you a great competitive advantage. Marketers should know how to stay up to date on new trends and the constantly changing marketing landscape. Forecasting the future of marketing and being the first to give the people what they really want will take you nowhere but the top -- Exactly where you belong. Is there anything better than that?

The rise of voice assistants has put a new customer-facing channel on the map for marketers. The promise is clear: voice-enabled devices operate as a fine blend of digital and physical realities, which makes room for truly contextual interactions with users. But with voice technology so young, it's still unclear if it can add up meaningfully to the marketing toolkit. In 2016, Gartner predicted 75 percent penetration of voice-activated devices in US households by 2020. We're now two years short of this deadline and the penetration rate is a humble 13 percent (though expected to rise to 55 percent by 2022).