EXECUTIVES PREDICT WHAT MARKETING WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2020

By Tom Lacki, Senior Advisor, 1to1 Faculty
Source: 1to1 Weekly

It's an exciting, perhaps even scary, time to be a marketer. Times are changing, media is changing, and even customers are changing. If the present is so unpredictable, what will the future look like?

A new study by 1to1 Media asked 150 members of the 1to1 Xchange panel the question, "what will one-to-one marketing look like in 2020?" The results show promise for a more connected and informed customer-company relationship.

The future looks bright, as 84 percent of respondents agree that there will be moderate to high levels of positive change occurring within one-to-one marketing by 2020. This means significant improvement in the ability of organizations to capture and share information, understand customer needs, calculate customer lifetime value, improve the customer experience, and provide customers with relevant messaging in their preferred channel.

Similarly, 78 percent agree that the future of marketing will be based on building authentic relationships more so than the development of new products. And customers will continue to gain control of the relationship. Online chats, blogs, and Internet-based social communities increasingly put control of the brand image into the hands of customers. On the customer service side, one bad experience can have an exponential impact on a company's reputation as customers share their stories electronically.

Companies that will break through to customers are the ones that will focus on fairness, transparency, and building trust across the board. By 2020, marketers will focus less on gaining short-term advantage and more on working to win and maintain customer trust -- in fact, 84 percent of respondents agree that building customer trust will become marketing's primary objective.

Historically, the goal of marketing was to promote sales. This shift in mindset suggests that marketers are more fully recognizing that a message can't influence customer behavior if the messenger isn't trusted.

Another key finding is the growth of customer collaboration -- 82 percent agree that collaboration with customers will prevail over marketing to customers by 2020. And it will only increase as the tools to enable and track customer insight and participation improve.

The future isn't completely bright, however. Respondents agree that there are "clouds on the one-to-one horizon" such as governmental regulations that impact privacy, the deluge of solicitations and messaging across channels, and the fact that customers' attention spans are in short supply and under increasing pressure.

So how do you do make a solid one-to-one strategy work? The first step is putting one-to-one marketing into the day-to-day operation of the organization to improve the customer experience. Even on the campaign level, a little customer focus goes a long way. (We break down the impact of tactics like communication timeliness and relevance within a number of industries in our Relationship Builder research series.)

Organizations that plan accordingly will have the early mover advantage. Those that fall behind now by not acting in customers' best interests will trail behind even further from their competitors. Keeping up won't be easy, however, and will require constant diligence to new developments and continued customer insight.