7 Trends in Marketing

The world is always changing. It helps to see what is changing, to make the most of it, and to anticipate and be ahead of the curve. 

1. Extensive Digital Transformation through Use of Data

The far-reaching automation of many business processes, including marketing, with beautiful and new tools linked to the internet. For example, your lead process to bring in new customers via various website (s) and connect with all kinds of beautiful new marketing automation tools. This often does not include one tool, but a set of well-functioning tools, called the marketing stack. It is also becoming increasingly advanced.

Data usage continues to intensify. Linking various technology tools to proprietary or cloud-hosted databases (e.g. via Google Sheets, Zapier) via APIs and then making analyzes and obtaining insights and integrating them into the business process for improved product range and customized communication. Or make the data more beautiful with Google Data Studio or Tableau, so that you can tell stories with the extra data and insights. This makes it easier to apply personalization and segmentation digitally. Also pay attention to Data Governance (or how you deal with the use and management of all that data). New kind of jobs arise like Data Engineers, Data Scientist, Data Vizualizers, AI programmers, etc.

2. Online Marketing or Digital Marketing (or just Marketing again) is approaching market maturity

And specializing further (A /B testing has become normal for the larger organization in online teams) and is mixed with the offline rollout of the best performing marketing communications. That may mean feeding your best Adwords, SEO texts, FB posts, or web pages to your brochures, flyers, posters and quotations to optimization programs.

3. Manage multiple media forms in different channels (multi-channel and media formats)

Trying to master store communication, website, mobile and other devices in different digital guises. But also using different content formats such as video, whitepapers, advertisements, blog posts, product training videos, and creating different forms and finally further optimizing this in the various (social, display) media channels. Just think of digital billboards in the city, or on new watches, mobile phones or tablets. This leaves new activities for content creation and management of content formats in multiple channels.

4. The Product becomes more of a Network or Platform

You not only sell the product, but also the service, experience, platform, data, connectivity, support forums, and the data packages around it. This means that you can start thinking in terms of eco-systems with 24/7 online connectivity. That also means thinking differently about partnerships. Just think of the connections to your CRM system, with other tools and devices (Internet of Things), or your product as a data sensor.

5. New Business Models are more easily possible digitally

For example a trend in marketing is by renting or sharing instead of buying. Examples such as the well-known GreenWheels in the Netherlands, or the vegetable subscription from Hello Fresh, or the community of KNAB bank. Other subscription types and payment methods are part of this. This also means that organizations opt for subscriptions instead of working in a transaction-oriented way. What does this mean for your service organization and customer loyalty? Making the experience easy through service experience design and customer journey optimizations are also important.

6. Agile working with Scrum

on a project basis and that flexible, is becoming more normal in more organizations (adoption). Comma Online works with Trello and Asana and that works very well. Sharing and following up to-do lists with colleagues / customers / freelancers / entrepreneurs in Sprints becomes a lot easier. Setup in software development, and now in adoption phase in marketing departments, and other areas of business. This speeds up the communication cycles.

7. The Startup Community is maturing

Just think of crowdfunding as a way to raise capital for investments up to 50k. with a concept “market test” at the same time. And also a group of potential customers / investors / reviewers to give the new product / service an extra boost. (Symbid or this Top 40 or this start-up coach program). This in turn yields new interesting startups. Perhaps also in your sector. Take a look at YesDelft or ECE in Rotterdam. New growth models are being developed and this market is maturing.

Mixing it all

There are a lot of trends in marketing and in your business and market, just try to map them, (for your external analysis), check out the (marketing) trends in your industry, learn from other sectors which can be ahead of yours and incorporate them in your strategy and update accordingly.  In addition, the economy everywhere offers additional digital growth opportunities for entrepreneurs.