The changing environment and the turbulence that 2020 has thrown us have forced us to rethink ourselves and understand that marketing, like many other disciplines, is a living entity that changes radically and that what we believed a few months ago worked, is not even remotely the same. that will work in the future, which forces us as businessmen to be prepared to face and understand these trends in order to serve this new consumer.
1.- E-Commerce.- The contingency forced the consumer to become self-sufficient in digital environments, from making banking transactions, requesting food at home through an application and carefully assembling and purchasing their shopping cart in the self-service of their choice. This new empowered consumer is ready with their device in hand to face the future and we must be ready to improve their shopping experience.
2.- Useful information.- The consumer has already evolved and by 2021 it will be much more difficult to conquer, it will no longer “give us” clicks as before, since they are bombarded daily with creative, segmented and attractive content and now “it will put on the bows” to see what clicks and what doesn’t. For this reason, we must change the strategy and use information of interest to that consumer in our content, so that they take something in return, present something they did not know about, meet their needs and even see their interests. For this, it is necessary to adequately know the sector of your consumer and look for all that content that may be useful, giving the brand much more presence and strength and therefore benefiting and generating loyalty towards the consumer. Do not forget to be constant in these publications. The one hit wonders no longer exist in marketing.
3.- Multiplatforms.- We have a strong tendency in the future to use multiplatforms to adequately communicate messages to our consumers. We know from a study by the Digital Marketing Institute that, for example, in terms of instant messaging, the use of apps such as WhatsApp grew 216% between February and September of this year, in terms of social networks Facebook grew 39%, Instagram 26%, Twitter 15%. and Tiktok 42% to name a few. There was a 270% growth in digital content such as podcasts or videopodcasts. YouTube had records of payment for content monetization. Spotify increased its premium subscribers by 11% in Mexico. Netflix, Prime Video and Apple TV + have grown their subscriptions by double digits so far this year and Zoom, since only its share has grown by 229% so far in 2021. In 2021 we will have a consumer interconnected on different platforms that demands information and immediacy and effective communication that integrates all these channels, including physical ones, in a coherent and coordinated way, offering unique and differentiated experiences.
4.- Response time.- Anxiety, fear, health problems, and stress have made our consumers very impatient in 2020. For this reason, we must strive this coming year to ensure that they have access to information at the moment that is required, as well as being in real-time contact with them and perhaps migrating from email to a much more personalized direct contact in real time.
Apart from mindful marketing, choosing in the coming year the form of advertising that is best for us to reach our consumer is an important challenge to which we must dedicate time, dedication and effort to achieve the expected results. Thanks to the professional help of an advertising agency, the solution may become more effective in landing and the objectives much more achievable. Don’t you think?
Eng. Héctor Sotomayor, MA, Tec de Monterrey professor in the Department of Engineering and Sciences, partner of the agency digitocreativo PUBLICIDAD, S.C.® and member of ASPAC. Email: hsotomayor@digitocreativo.com.mx