developments instead of trends
I'm not a big fan of articles like " The most important trends for 2016 " because trends don't stick to annual cycles, but often creep up and sometimes take longer and sometimes shorter to reach the tipping point and thereby gain social relevance. One example of this is mobile, which was one of the hot topics 4-5 years ago and has been on every annual trend list to date. The topic of content marketing also took over 3 years before it really reached everyone in charge.
Nevertheless, I am always happy when colleagues from t3n ( The biggest online marketing trends of 2016 ) and Peer Wandiger from selbststsendigimnetz.de ( 4 expert forecasts and practical chile phone number data tips for 2016 ) ask me to vote for them. On the one hand, I am pleased to be named in a list of votes from other highly valued colleagues, and on the other hand, years later, you can still see whether your own forecasts were correct.
In this article, however, I prefer to talk about developments rather than trends, as the term trend always has a certain short- to medium-term aspect or hype associated with it. However, I think that the following eleven developments will have a decisive influence on marketing over the next two to five years at least, and in some cases beyond.
Below I have tried to sort these developments by timeframe. Starting with developments that already affect us on a daily basis and ending with developments that we will probably only feel in a few years. This also results in an order of priority for responding to these developments.
Let's get started...
Development 1: The digital B2C market is largely saturated
The digital gold rush mood is over. The days when "being online" was a guarantee of success are history. Simply having an innovative offer is not enough to succeed in the digital market. The added value of the solutions for the potential customer must be conveyed, trust and sympathy must be gained and the right communication channels must be chosen to communicate these messages at the right time and in the right place. (Keywords: touchpoints and customer journey . More on this below).
B2C companies that have so far missed the digitalization transition and new companies that want to enter existing markets have to find their niche and make do with it initially. In addition, based on the position of the digital competition, it should be carefully considered whether digital market entry makes sense with the current offering. If not, the offering and target groups should be fundamentally questioned. In many B2B sectors, however, especially when it comes to non-digital products, the situation looks even more positive. German medium-sized companies in particular seem to be just waking up from their digital hibernation.