Mafalda Martins The year 2020 is about to end. Looking back, it was a year of much transformation in the business world, with the need – almost forced – to transition to digital and eCommerce, due to the worldwide pandemic caused by the new coronavirus. While the 2020 trends highlighted the need for increased flexibility in organizations and the emphasis on the importance of the customer experience, over the course of the year all of these points were accelerated. According to Deloitte‘s “2021 Global Marketing Trends” report, in 2021 the focus will be on human experience and relationships. Discover below the main conclusions of this study and which are the main Marketing trends for 2021.
7 Marketing Trends for 2021
1 – Purpose
Organizations that know why they exist and who they were created for are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the post-pandemic world.
The crisis generated by Covid-19, has made many consumers pay more attention to the contribution each company has made to support its customers, employees, and community. In fact, according to the study, 79% of consumers memorized brands that played this active role during the pandemic, from financial institutions that deferred loan payments, to shoe companies that donated thousands of pairs of shoes to the hospital community, or even decades-old companies that changed their internal policies and processes to ensure the safety of their employees.
When an organization’s responses to crisis are guided by a holistic purpose – connecting the company’s role in society to its long-term value – there is a clear alignment between its brand identity and a sustained commitment to all stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers and the community, as well as shareholders. It is these “purpose-driven” companies that will have increasing prominence and growth in the coming years.
2 – Agility
The time is right for marketers to choose the relevant digital tools and create an organizational roadmap to make agile marketing a reality.
The year 2020 did not give much of a chance to organizations that had not yet faced the digital transformation: they had to do it in an accelerated way and often without any preparation for it. This is because consumers, too, have been forced to embrace the digital world – many people have experienced shopping through eCommerce stores for the first time, for example. According to Deloitte, the pandemic has caused more than half of consumers (66%) to place more importance on user-friendly technologies, and 63% say they will continue to use digital media after the pandemic.
On the business side, rapid and forced adaptation has also occurred. In another Deloitte study, 41% of managers said that the main result they hoped to achieve by implementing more digital technologies and platforms was to react more quickly to customer needs. For marketers this represents a defining moment. Given the rapid changes being made by customers, who increasingly value and rely on digital, it is more important than ever to accelerate – rather than strangle – investments that enable organizations to respond quickly and relevantly to customer requests. Deloitte identifies 3 trends that help make agile marketing a reality:
– Have a clear picture of the market with a CRM
The basis of agile marketing lies in the ability to have a 360º view of the customer. This requires a technological system such as CRM – Customer Relationship Management, which aggregates all customer-related data in one place, helps map the customer journey, and can provide analytics that give a clear picture of the market and customers. To be able to draw this picture, all channels need to be integrated with the CRM – from the website and eCommerce store, to the social media and email marketing platform.
For example, let’s imagine a company that produces goods for sale to the consumer. Before implementing a CRM, they had customer data spread across 8 different Excel tables, which were updated weekly and gathered information on various channels. By mapping the customer journey with CRM, the company was able to consolidate in one place all data regarding website interactions, app, SMS, call center and in-store transactions. It is thus able to profile each user and segment and deliver relevant messages across the entire journey to over 50 million customers – as their needs revealed themselves in real time.
– Anticipate the conversation
By combining CRM with “predictive detection” technology, based on machine learning and artificial intelligence, it becomes possible to analyze and predict which consumers are about to do something – whether it’s buy a product or ask to speak to a sales person. Understanding these behaviors is crucial to making the moment of sale and the entire customer experience positive.
– Ensuring that CRM has Social CRM capabilities
In response to the pandemic, 67% of managers reported increasing their brands’ social media presence. Thus, it is increasingly important that CRM is integrated with social networks and allows to understand how customers are interacting with brand social networks.
3 – Human Experience
Organizations must see themselves as human entities that reflect – and support – the values of those they were created to serve.
When it comes to efficiency or humanizing the experience, the two worlds must be combined. If this doesn’t happen, it could be the case, for example, of sending a communication to the wrong audience, or in an unpersonalized way. However, in the rush to become more efficient in their digital solutions, many organizations have left the human experience in the background. Meanwhile, Covid-19 appeared all over the world and technology became the main channel of interaction during confinement. It was at this time that people most craved human connections. As a result, consumers focused on companies that had human-centered experiences.
Meanwhile, on the business side, many companies are just looking to survive, and according to the study, many managers’ priority during the pandemic focused on productivity and efficiency.
To solve this problem, a middle ground must be found between efficiency and human experience. Organizations must reassess and reflect on their own values to meet the needs of their customers, employees, and stakeholders. Organizations need to reinvent themselves and now is the right time to do it – rethink values, operations, and infrastructure. It is an opportunity to innovate and rebuild the human experience in a way that meets our collective needs, whether it is through solutions that benefit the whole through their value or by recreating infrastructure that meets the needs of society. To begin this reflection, you can start by answering these three questions:
- What is most important to your customers, employees and stakeholders? Have you been listening to what they have to tell you? What are their most urgent needs?
- Have you identified any issues in your organization that need to be redefined? What is your plan to systematically address these issues and how will you communicate this at the right time?
- How can your organization be more proactive in identifying and aligning with stakeholder needs?
4 – Trust
To build trust in these turbulent times, organizations must look at what people value and ensure that their promises are in line with their ability to deliver.
According to the Deloitte study, which polled 2,447 people in eight different countries, 66% of people said they could recall a time during the pandemic when a brand acted out of self-interest – such as raising prices on essential goods. More than 1 in 4 people also responded that these actions caused them to distance themselves from the brand.
More than the demographics of your audience, marketers should focus on understanding what their values are and how the organization identifies with them. To start building trust with your audience, you can begin with these three steps:
- Examine whether your message aligns with the human component and transparency. Is your organization able to fulfill these intentions?
- Address the importance of trust in your organization for both marketing and the business as a whole.
- Change and redefine your message as customer values change. Consider your organization’s current ability to understand customer values and measure trust.
5 – Participation
Today, customers themselves are becoming both brand ambassadors, influencers, collaborators, and actively contribute to innovation.
As companies have to adopt to a constantly changing landscape and respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, dynamic business models have gained a new emphasis. While there are several steps that can be taken to respond to the new reality, there is one that stands out: streamline the way the company relates to customers. In a Deloitte study done in May, 64% of managers said they have transformed the way their organization relates to customers to better respond to the pandemic.
There are many ways to engage customers and increase their participation, from encouraging simple actions like writing online reviews or sharing something related to the organization on social media, to more complex initiatives like co-creating products together with customers or creating content for the brand, made by the customers themselves (e.g. articles, videos, etc.).
Among the main reasons why the public wants to participate and feel closer to organizations are “helping others”, mainly related to writing online reviews, “sharing something exciting” or “being an expert on a certain product or service”.
To be able to create a strategy that involves customer engagement, regardless of whether the company is B2C or B2B, marketers should try to understand where this moment in the customer journey currently resides – it could be in social media groups or industry forums, for example. In addition, managers should strive to go beyond typical loyalty actions (such as loyalty programs or responses to surveys regarding customer experience), as these actions are often not bi-directional. A fluid conversation should be created that brings the customer closer and makes them feel part of the organization.
6 – Fusion
In the post-pandemic era a new ecosystem will emerge, in which organizations from different industries come together to address society’s challenges.
Even before the pandemic, several companies started to have a collaborative, more human-centric mindset, with the main goal of responding to customer needs and the challenges we face today as humanity – rather than focus on profit. For some companies, the pandemic has forced them to think about new partnership strategies and seek innovative collaborations – UberEats, for example, has partnered with several supermarkets and pharmacies to be able to include delivery of these essentials in its offering, for example. As a result of this collaboration, customers can buy these products with maximum security, without the worry of having to go to supermarkets or places where there may be many people.
However, there are still a number of organizations that are in a defensive mindset and prefer to react to market changes rather than lead innovation. In the Deloitte study, 42% of managers said that improving efficiency and productivity was the main result they hoped to achieve by responding to the pandemic. This scenario could be good news for Marketeers, as they now have the opportunity to lead and orchestrate new partnerships with different entities that result in new ways to address customer problems and foster innovation.
The pandemic has increased the need for organizations to respond to their customers’ needs in a more holistic way. And managers who have formed new partnerships with entities from different sectors see them as a long-term path to success. Some 78% of the managers surveyed said they will maintain the new partnerships to some extent after the pandemic – the biggest of all business model changes.
With the pandemic transforming the way people relate to each other, marketers now have the opportunity to look at digital innovation and understand how they can leverage it – within their own organization and in conjunction with others – to be able to respond to society’s needs. As the manager closest to customers, Marketeers gain a more important and unique role to identify these needs and redefine innovation strategies. The Deloitte study showed that in the coming months, managers cite marketing and sales as the second most critical function (63%), after digital technology (68%). All this is happening in a “perfect storm” in which many customers are having their first digital experiences, such as online shopping or video calling.
To foster innovation, marketers should start by identifying products or services outside their organization but that add value to the company’s current offering and which people on the team can activate these collaborations. After that, a road map for the innovation project must be drawn, where it must be equated how the coordination between the various partners will occur and what investments will be necessary to sustain these partnerships.
7 – Talent
Organizational flexibility and the knowledge of Marketing teams will be the big competitive factors. Organizations need to boost learning in their teams, while automating repetitive work, to be able to keep up with the fast pace of change we live in.
More and more people are switching from the typical 9am to 5pm job to freelancing or working on shorter contracts in order to gain more freedom and independence – the gig economy. At the same time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly evolving and can already automate many routine tasks and anticipate customer needs. In this context, the most attentive organizations have already invested in training their marketing teams to be able to keep up with the fast pace of change and in attracting talent in a different and more attractive way to the new generations.
More than ever, most organizations need the Marketing team to be able to cope with the new changes that happened in 2020. According to the Deloitte study, 77% of CMOs turned to Artificial Intelligence to automate repetitive tasks during the pandemic. Only in this way is it possible for teams to have time to think about strategy and new ways to approach the market.
There is, therefore, an opportunity for organizations to develop new talent models that ensure the organization’s flexibility and knowledge as a competitiveness factor.
Pandemic has demonstrated the importance of agility – perhaps this is why more and more companies are choosing to bring knowledge in-house rather than outsourcing to external partners for services related to creativity or analytics. Outsourcing can provide access to varied knowledge, but it also creates another layer between the company and customers, and often hampers agility. In addition, companies that rely on external agencies and partners are basically outsourcing their competitive advantage – the knowledge.
No one knows the organization better than its employees, so the first step in building an internalization strategy is to assess the workflows, technologies, and skill sets they have at their disposal inside, to understand how to make the best use of it. Once you’ve taken stock, you need to understand how you can optimize the day-to-day operations of your marketing team. For example, by moving practical tasks like copywriting or graphic design to freelancers, you can free up marketing teams to focus on what can really differentiate the company – strategy, learning and creativity. The gig economy not only provides marketers with a network of contacts – and the ability to scale when needed – but also a platform to get new ideas.
Similarly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another tool that in-house marketing teams can use for greater efficiency. In addition to automating tasks, AI can be used to analyze data, deliver the message to the right person at the right time, or even predict behavior.
To make sure that the marketing team keeps up with the changes and makes the best use of technologies and skills, many companies have created “marketing universities” within the organization itself or organized workshops on specific topics, so that their employees are constantly learning.
C-Level manager buy-in is usually the key to helping establish learning as part of the company culture. When this happens, employees feel more empowered to act quickly and adapt to customer needs as they arise. Organizations that do this the right way can even become disruptive in their industries.
To begin transforming the talent models in your company, you can start by answering these questions:
- Have there been conversations with management on the topic of evolving the talent model? Can you identify a model – or parts of a model – that would work well for your team?
- Have you assessed your team’s strengths and weaknesses? What trainings would be an asset to educate your team? What new skills would help the team prepare for the future of marketing?
- Does your organization allow employees to quickly adapt to customer needs? How can you embed constant learning within your organization’s culture?
Prepare for the future with expert support
If 2020 brought major changes for most companies, 2021 will be no different. From the incorporation of new technologies – such as CRM or Marketing Automation -, to training in new Marketing and Sales skills, it is necessary to empower teams with the right tools to deal with change and act quickly to customers’ needs.
As specialists in MarTech, such as CRM or Marketing Automation, Liminal will help your company to prepare for the future, through the selection, adaptation and implementation of the ideal technologies for your reality and the training of teams to be proficient in the use of tools to support Marketing and Sales.
Talk to us and start preparing your company for the future.
