Coming up with and executing new ideas are difficult, thus the next best way is to have access to validated and predictive loyalty and emotional engagement metrics to help point the way. After examining over 100,000 consumer assessments, some critical trends were identified to help marketers create their own successful future.
1. Consumers expect more. Over the past 5 years, consumer expectations have increased on average 20%. Brands have kept up by only 5%, a big gap between what’s desired and what’s delivered. The ability to accurately measure real, unarticulated expectations, will provide significant advantages.
2. Attention must be paid to brands. Increased expectations come with a greater sense of product and service commoditization. You may be known, but you need to be known for something meaningful and important to the customers.
3. Category is king. Brands will stop trading away category-specificity for cross-category generalities in how they target, strategize, and execute content. To engage smarter, high-expectation consumers, brand wills need to be smarter about specific category values they can leverage.
4. Brands will get emotional. Values that drive the brand decision process to have become more emotionally-driven. Successful brands will identify what emotional values exist in their category, and utilize them as a foundation for meaningful differentiation.
5. Real brand “engagement” defined. Successful marketers will link “engagement” to how efforts increase, how well the brand is perceived versus the Cateogry Idea, and a metric that correlates highly with loyalty, sales, and profitability.
6. Targeting becomes personal. With consumers craving and expecting more, brands that better respond to real consumer expectations will find consumers engaging with brands that are able to personzlie messaging and outreach.
7. Digital done right. With digital diversification getting bigger, and with more channels, brands need to shift their quesiton from “Should I be here?” to “What should I do now that I am here?” Success will be linked not to outreach, but brand differentiation and emotional engagement.
Do these trends intrigue you? If yes, click here.