In October 2022, the world's inflation became the highest for 40 years. Many marketers are dealing with challenges due to the current high-inflation environment. In a crisis, it is crucial to understand how consumers will behave and adapt their strategies accordingly to continue delivering value to consumers and differentiate themselves from competitors.
The rise of analytics
Analytics in online marketing in 2022 is even more important than before. As advertising budgets shrink, brands are eager to allocate funds to the most effective promotion option, calculating its potential results beforehand. More often than not, decisions based on analytics actually have more impact than those made intuitively. Businesses are increasingly immersed in tracking performance metrics and finding specific ways to communicate with the customer. Advanced analytics systems are used to see audience behavior in detail and build hypotheses. It's easy to monitor Website audience overview with Finteza analytics service.
All in one place
Many companies have faced the problem that their IT systems are becoming increasingly complex and voluminous due to the significant number of disparate systems they use today. It's hard to access information across these different platforms without investing in projects that combine information from different systems into one unified system, or manual processes.
Often end-to-end analytics services perform only one task: bring the data together. Then an analyst or marketer has to come in and decide what to do and how to manage advertising campaigns. But why do you need a human, if a machine can do the same analytical work? And redistribute bids for better results automatically? The system does not need to wait to manage your campaigns - it instantly analyzes the traffic and works according to predefined algorithms. And optimizers will not necessarily adjust the rates as they wish. They can prompt the marketer and give recommendations, which makes the task much easier.
Social Inclusion
In 2022, audiences want brands to strive for inclusiveness. Consumers want companies to reflect their interests and attitudes without singling out certain social groups. It is necessary for customers to feel that they belong to the values of the manufacturer whose products they use. That's why brands started to study their audience even more deeply, trying to involve their experience in various promotional materials. It considerably increases customer loyalty, and positively influences the success of the advertising campaign.
Forbes Communications Council members explored brands that successfully model diverse and inclusive advertising. And it's big brands already: Apple, Target, Nike, even Coca-Cola, and Barbie.
Building trust
Another way to increase customer loyalty continues to be a transparent business. Just as during the pandemic, audiences are favoring brands to which they have previously developed a certain level of trust. As a result, consumers expect companies to provide quality service, high ratings, and a good image. Customers also want brands to openly announce their position on issues of concern in their social networks to be able to associate themselves with their favorite manufacturer of goods and services. Moreover, any mistake can cost the trust of a large portion of the audience. According to recent surveys by HotSpot, currently, only a third of B2C marketers surveyed find social responsibility to be an effective marketing trend. Despite that fact, 45% plan to increase their investment in 2023.
Reducing the distance between the audience and the brand
Multichannel is a new trend. Despite the need for broad market coverage, brands should strive to reduce the distance between the consumer and the manufacturer. Customers like to feel cared for, so the ability to order directly from a supplier, ask a question and get a quick and relevant answer is critical.
In 2022, audiences value convenience even more, so they prefer brands that have their own app with a clear interface or website with a chatbot. Consumers like fast home or office delivery, promotions, and discount promo codes. That's why businesses continue to develop their own communication channels, making them as accessible to customers as possible. And companies with ecosystems that combine several services at once in a single space certainly occupy a leading position in the market.
Customer journey
The customer journey is the user's journey from need to purchase. Customer journey analytics helps determine what steps a user goes through to purchase. It helps manage communication channels and identify weaknesses. The Customer Journey Map (CJM) is most commonly used to visualize the customer journey. They use surveys, and in-depth interviews, and study the behavior of the target audience. In particular, they use services to track user's actions on the site. You can also build and optimize sales funnels through the Finteza service.
Geodata analytics
Location-based analytics for Marketing (Location Intelligence for Marketing) emerged at the peak of the Gartner curve's inflated expectations in 2018. By 2021, it had moved to the stage of getting rid of illusions. Gartner believes that prospects for this technology are hampered by tensions between consumers and brands over how customer location data is used. Today, the most effective way to use location data is to geo-target people who have already visited the brand's outlets. This allows you to increase loyalty and increase the number of repeat purchases.
Another way is to use geo-targeting data about competitors' users. The brand determines who makes purchases from competitors and promotes its service to this audience. The company can also find out users' habits, for example, when they come to a competitor's store in the evenings. Then it's worth showing them your ads at lunchtime and in the evening, so you can "intercept" the user.
Changes come
But a recent Forbes article by Alex Song, the CEO, and founder of Proxima says:
"Since iOS privacy changes, social media platforms are not as effective at finding the right audiences. Targeted marketing was once the key to personalization, increased brand awareness, and higher engagement, especially via social media channels. But now, consumer privacy rules are threatening to destroy targeted advertising."
He proposes to experiment with new platforms such as TikTok, and "hustle hard" and experiment with different and multiple strategies, have a close look at first-party data collected directly from consumers or users, look for second-party data from partners, leverage third-party data and AI.
Marketing is all about changes. The key skill of a marketer is strategic vision. A marketer should not be locked into only one tool. You need to do something narrow, but at least have a superficial understanding of the other channels. To synchronize your actions with global marketing goals, you need to see the big picture.
