Whether you’re just starting out with your business or looking to improve what you’re already doing, these nine marketing trends and tips will steer you on the right path to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.
1. The 2020s
As we learn to live with Covid, there have been a number of major changes to society. Remote working has become the norm, with hybrid models here to stay. The high street has been decimated with countless brands going under and many more switching to digital-only offerings eg. Gap in the UK. eCommerce is more competitive than ever. Companies have had to adapt or die.
Many of us also have become restless with 48% of employees in 2021 saying they are considering leaving or moving jobs. More than ever, we are looking for balance, fulfilment and to enjoy life more. People are sick of fake news, nastiness on social media, shysters trying to steal from us and the never-ending political noise.
The key trends are:
- A sense of community and a need for kindness, humanity and connection. Looking after one another and the planet.
- Seeking to do good, to contribute, to give, to find meaning.
- Resurgence of local businesses, charities and volunteering
- Hybrid working and flexibility.
All of these shape how we serve those in our work and lives – our customers, our family, and our friends.
2. Marketing – Back to Basics
To succeed you need to get the fundamentals right. Whether you’re a one-person business or work for a large organisation, these guiding principles will set you on the right path:
- Understand your customers and audience better than anyone else. Speak to them, survey them, build a community. Research. Listen. Get to know them, understand their problems, how they live, what they do and how you can help them succeed. Become obsessed with the customer journey – what it looks like and how to make it as slick as possible.
- Create a captivating offer – something that addresses their pain points and will genuinely make their lives better. How can you create and give value?
- Over deliver – give and deliver more than is expected, and continue to provide value and support. Build relationships and create advocates for what you do.
Get these right and you will succeed.
Some useful books and further reading:
- Seth Godin: This is Marketing (for everyone)
- Allan Dib: The One Page Marketing Plan (for small businesses and entrepreneurs)
- Bryony Thomas: Watertight Marketing (for all sizes of business)
- Richard Shotton: The Choice Factory (for everyone)
- Philip Cotler: Principles of Marketing (for students and those looking for a deep dive)
- Smart Insights website (useful frameworks and practical advice, no matter your level of experience)
3. Brand and Proposition
What is your brand’s story, the central proposition that lets everyone understand what you do and how you can help? What do you stand for? How do your values align with this? These are the key questions you need to answer. Put your customer at the heart of this narrative, make them the hero of the journey and test until you get it right.
A common mistake that gets made is to just focus on differentiation – what you or your company does that is different to your competitors. If you go down this route you will very quickly get drawn into a world of pricing, features and benefits comparisons. Don’t do it. By all means undertake competitive analysis but don’t let that be your guiding light.
Distinctiveness is the route to pursue. Make your brand distinctive and different from the competition. You need to stand out. A great example of this is Apple. They are a technology company but their ‘think different’ branding is markedly unique from the rest of the competition in this space. Try to do the same with your brand.
Once you have got the story right you will need to develop your brand assets – logo, style guide, typography, brand voice and tone. Be consistent and stick with it once developed. And, of course, continually seek feedback from your customers.
Further reading:
- Building a Story Brand (for everyone) – Donald Miller
- The Brand Gym (for larger businesses) – David Taylor and David Nichols
4. Two Speed Marketing
To ensure long term success you need to deliver on two distinct strands of activity:
- Long term brand building (over months and years)
- Short term activation (ongoing campaigns on specific products and services to generate income)
The balance between the two will be determined by the size of your business and your budget but where possible you need to consider both. If you’re just starting out it’s best to focus on short-term activation so that you can generate cash flow. For more established businesses you need to do both.
Pressure for sales will always drive short-term campaigns, but longer-term brand building can reap bigger rewards over time – for example, market recognition and share of voice. A suggested balance to aim for is 60% of your marketing spend on short-term activation campaigns and 40% on longer-term brand-building activities.
5. The Cookie Apocalypse
For many years marketers have relied on cookies and third-party data to deliver targeted campaigns and personalised content and support. This is coming to an end with the removal of cookies from websites and marketing solutions. GDPR legislation and tighter data control mean a different approach is needed.
The dichotomy is that customers don’t want to share their personal data, yet at the same time they do want their interactions with organisations to be personalised. This means a different model is needed. The main answer is first-party data – encouraging customers to give you their details and building your own database. Zero-party data is also useful – where customers give you their information to enable personalised content and services.
The bottom line is that you need to have your own database of contacts of prospects, customers and stakeholders who have a genuine interest in what you do. This becomes a valuable asset that allows you to deliver relevant, targeted content and services.
The tools and technologies you use to deliver your marketing will also need to be updated to comply with these tracking changes. Make sure any solution you adopt does not rely on cookies. Ignore this tip at your peril.
6. Email Marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most effective channels for achieving results. If you have a database of customers and you are able to nurture them and provide valuable content and support, you will have a higher chance of developing a sustainable customer base. It typically takes 7-11 interactions before someone will buy from you, so it’s essential to implement models that deliver value and encourage engagement.
Some key things to do:
- Pick a suitable Email Management System to deliver your campaigns. Active Campaign is feature-packed, delivers complex nurture campaigns and flexibility but there are many other services available. Do your research and pick one that meets your needs. MailChimp, GetResponse and MailPoet are other options to consider.
- Create a list of customers/prospects and make sure it is segmented by interest/topic to enable you to provide tailored content. Ways to capture preferences are through feedback forms, quizzes and lead nurture content sign-ups.
- If you are setting up a nurture campaign, your sequence of emails should adopt the following approach: Email 1 (valuable content), Email 2 (valuable content), Email 3 (valuable content), Email 4 (offer for product/service), repeat..
- Test your subject lines and email timings to optimise performance. Many platforms do this for you.
A trend that’s emerging is the use of artificial intelligence to deliver personalised and relevant content. Rasa.io is an example of this. It tracks the links and content that users click on within an email, allowing you to then provide tailored content and offers based on these interactions.
Other tools automatically predict the best times to send emails and can provide immediate feedback on your emails. Expect more capabilities like this to become available in the coming months and years.
Further reading:
7. High Quality Content
Without good content, you can forget the other tips listed here. This is an area you need to get right. Content needs to be relevant, targeted to the right customer, digestible for them and actionable. If you don’t have the skills then it’s definitely worth investing in outside help. You need to develop a clear content strategy if you want to succeed.
Good content will set you apart from your competitors and when done correctly, will be one of your most valuable assets. This is a major topic in itself, but here are some pointers:
- Develop personas or profiles for your users/customers, and use these to create top tasks and journeys that you will then create content for at each stage of their relationship with you.
- Research channels and platforms where you will post content and make sure to track performance so that you know what’s working and what’s not.
- Follow the KISS principle – Keep It Simple Stupid – for all content that you create. It needs to be clear, understandable and actionable.
- Test content with customers wherever you can – perhaps running some paid advertising experiments and adopting the most successful approaches into your organic content delivery.
- Use the power of multi-purposing – If you are delivering a Facebook Live, use the information to create written content/posts (with a tool like Otter.ai), repurpose the video content as shorter clips on other platforms eg. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, then use the audio for a podcast. You get the idea. Make the most of the content that you are creating.
- Be consistent – if you are posting on social channels then you need to post regularly. Find a model that works for you.
- Get interactive – use quizzes, short courses, free guides, webinars, Podcasts, Books, videos to deliver your content.
- Websites – if your website is selling a product or service then the offer needs to be clear and above the fold, visible when the page loads without scrolling. Use multiple calls to action and ensure your content reflects this.
- SEO – make sure your content is optimised to perform well on search engines.
Further reading:
Sonja Jefferson – Valuable content marketing
Experiences – The 7th Era of marketing
Ann Handley – Everybody Writes
8. Social Media
It’s worth calling out social media specifically as a key aspect of content as it’s such a significant part of the marketing mix. Again, this is a major area and we’ll cover in greater detail in a future post, but for now, here are some key trends and tips to consider:
- Targeting is everything so you need to spend time evaluating and determining the channels to focus on and use.
- Short-form content continues to dominate – think TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts. Consider as part of your approach. Educational content is also growing in this format eg. TikTok books.
- Social selling is a growing trend, from Instagram to TikTok and YouTube.
- In-game advertising – gaming continues to be a dominant force. If your target audience is on gaming platforms, consider in-game advertising.
- Influencers continue to be a big part of the social landscape with more and more creators generating a living across channels. The platforms are competing with each other to provide opportunities to monetise. Partnerships are something to explore in this space.
- Audio content continues to perform well, from podcasts to Spotify to Clubhouse. If your content lends itself to this medium then they are worth considering.
- Web 3.0 – the metaverse is still in its infancy but something to watch over the next year or two. NFTs and Augmented Reality Commerce are still developing but will continue to grow.
- Multichannel Magnificence – more is more – the more channels you are able to put your content out on naturally, the greater your reach and the greater your success is likely to be. Research and manage carefully, but use as many relevant channels as you can.
- As well as the main social platforms, there’s been a huge growth in brand-owned communities. For larger organisations these provide an exciting opportunity for creating supportive networks that can become an invaluable asset. These take the power away from the big players.
Further reading:
Digital Sense – Travis Wright
9. Measure, Measure, Measure
The final piece of the jigsaw is measurement. You need to know what’s working and what’s not, to make sure you’re making the most of your marketing budget, that you’re doing the right things and can identify areas to improve. All of the platforms provide useful metrics – just make sure you focus on those that matter: visits, leads, customers, conversion rates, costs, time on page, recency, frequency, value.
You need to reflect back on what your objectives are and use the tools to optimise and improve. If you’re just starting out it’s sensible to invest in help to make sure you have the right framework in place. We’ll revisit this topic in a future blog, but for now, here are a few trends to watch and some useful resources to explore.
- Google is rolling out new algorithms this year. Make sure you’re using the Latest Google Analytics version and up to speed on the changes being implemented.
- Predictive analytics is a growing field – how can you use data to interpret and anticipate future user activity.
Further Reading:
Marketing Metrics – Hubspot
Google Analytics Academy
Web Analytics 2.0 – Avinash Kashik
Measuring the Digital World – Gary Angel
Successful Analytics – Brian Clifton
Predictive Analytics – Eric Siegel
