Christmas trees are slowly starting to light up our homes and streets. It's time to shed some light on the marketing trends of 2017. What sectors should you focus on as a company? What's on your customers' wish list this year? And how can you attract more potential business partners? We present three interesting ideas.
Customer experience and customer centricity
We live in the age of the customer. Customer experience (CX) will be the deciding factor in choosing a brand in 2017, not price or even the product itself. Customers want communication that is directly addressed to them, that meets their personal desires and requirements . This affects the way a company advertises, sells and delivers services and products. Often, we put too much emphasis on what we deliver, instead of focusing on how we deliver, because the customer should be at the center of all dominica business email list communication . This approach is called customer centricity. What is the added value of your products and services to customers? Why are you promoting this particular one? Where, when and through which channels would customers prefer to receive this information? I also refer to the B2B market, where customer-centric marketing is playing an increasingly important role : a specific campaign for a single customer. In 2017, personas and customer journeys should be the foundation of your marketing plan.
Content, content, content!
Consumers are hungry for high-quality content, such as user-generated content (UGC) , which tells authentic, credible, and compelling stories. People are much more likely to buy a product after reading a positive blog post about it, and they value other customers’ opinions more than advertising. Almost as important as content is the basic information : what works, what doesn’t, and how you communicate it. Base your marketing on analytics and systematically generating high-quality leads . This trend is also becoming increasingly popular in the B2B environment. Video and visual storytelling —from short corporate videos to testimonials and vlogs to documentaries, virtual reality, and live streaming—are replacing bland corporate presentations and are valuable parameters for assessing the value of your site. Short video messages are also increasingly being sent on channels such as LinkedIn.
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Silos disappear from the scene
This trend is developing slowly but surely: companies are disappearing into islands where everyone is doing their own thing. Increasing digitalization means that departments have to cooperate and share data and platforms. However, making sales, marketing, IT, HR, customer service and other departments really work together requires a clear vision and a specific plan from management – and this is usually where the dog is buried. Tips? Let marketing specialists participate in sales meetings with customers, let sales and marketing sit at one table and exchange all information about their customers. The closer they are, the better the results will be . A well-chosen CRM system that combines company data can also help with cooperation ( find out how ). Focus everything on the customer, and the circle will close.
Only three trends? Yes. Because the problem with trends is that everyone sets them and shares them, but only a few do anything about them. So let your New Year's resolution for 2017 be to stick to these three ideas. And when you're ready, check out these other articles:
