I know several Atlanta entrepreneurs who made fortunes selling marketing technology companies. Think email marketing workflow, automation, etc. They nailed the timing because two major trends were happening at the same time. Software as a service (SaaS) was gaining traction thanks to cloud computing pioneer Amazon Web Services. And after the global financial crisis when companies were looking for inexpensive ways to market to customers, email was a perfect option.

The more I talk with people on the marketing front lines, the more I see that marketing is undergoing a huge shift again. I’ve been introduced to several factors, and  I’m trying to get up to speed on them. But even with my current shallow understanding, I can tell that the combination of these factors is upending how companies market to customers. It seems that a convergence of factors is creating white space. There isn’t any technology that helps marketers create, execute, and measure the latest marketing strategies. It’s all very manual, piecemeal, and painful.

Marketing is a requirement for all businesses because customers have to know about you. That means the shifting marketing landscape must be causing pain for a ton of people. Translation: a huge market opportunity.

I suspect we’ll see a new crop of marketing technology–focused entrepreneurs capitalize on the changing landscape. They’ll come up with new solutions that create, execute, and measure efforts in this new marketing landscape, and they’ll build massive companies in the process.