Staying on top of changes in the world can help you make the most of your opportunities and stay ahead of the game. Keeping up with what’s changing is essential for success. Discover these trends in marketing.
1. Extensive Digital Transformation through Use of Data
Automation of business processes is becoming increasingly advanced, and marketing is no exception. Beautiful and innovative tools linked to the internet are making it easier to bring in new customers, automate lead processes, and create a powerful marketing stack. Technology tools are being connected to databases and APIs, allowing for analysis and insights that can be integrated into the business process for improved products and personalized communication. In addition, data can be made more beautiful with data visualizers and governed more effectively with new roles like Data Engineer, Data Scientist, and AI Programmers.
2. Online Marketing or Digital Marketing (or just Marketing again) is approaching market maturity
Specializing even further and mixing online and offline results can help optimize your marketing efforts. A/B testing has become the norm for larger organizations, feeding the best Adwords, SEO texts, FB posts, and web pages into brochures, flyers, posters, and quotations. This will lead to improved results. Digital Marketing becomes Marketing again, but smarter.
3. Manage multiple media forms in different channels (multi-channel and media formats)
To maximize efficiency instore communication and digital marketing, you’ll need to master different devices, content formats such as videos, whitepapers, advertisements, blog posts, and product training videos, and create various forms of content. You’ll also need to optimize your content across different channels, such as on digital billboards, watches, mobile phones, and tablets. Taking all these steps will help you create and manage content formats in multiple channels.
4. The Product becomes more of a Network or Platform
Selling your product isn’t just about offering the product itself. It also involves offering services, experiences, platforms, data, connectivity, support forums, and data packages. To build an effective eco-system with 24/7 online connectivity, you must consider different partnerships. This could include connecting with a CRM system, other tools and devices (Internet of Things), and using your product as a data sensor.
5. New Business Models are more easily possible digitally
Organizations are increasingly exploring renting or sharing as an alternative to buying – think GreenWheels in the Netherlands, Hello Fresh vegetable subscriptions, and KNAB bank’s community. This shift in approach also means that organizations are more focused on subscriptions than on transactions. What does this mean for your service organization and customer loyalty? It’s important to make the experience easy through service experience design and customer journey optimizations.
6. Agile working with Scrum
Agile working with Scrum is becoming more normalized in organizations, allowing teams to work together more flexibly on a project basis. Tools like Trello and Asana help teams quickly share and keep track of to-do lists, making communication cycles run faster. This approach to working is already widely used in software development and is now being adopted by marketing teams and other business areas.
7. The Startup Community is maturing
Crowdfunding is a great way to raise up to 50k in capital for investments and to test the market for a new product or service. It also helps to bring together potential customers, investors, and reviewers that can provide an extra boost to the project. This can lead to interesting new startups, including in your own sector. Examples of this are YesDelft and ECE in Rotterdam, where new growth models are being developed and the market is maturing.
Mixing it all
To stay on top of your industry trends, it’s important to map out what’s happening in your business and market. Take a look at the latest marketing trends in your industry and learn from other sectors who may be ahead of yours. Incorporate those trends into your strategy and make sure to keep it updated as needed. Additionally, the digital economy offers plenty of growth opportunities for entrepreneurs.