This year once again, the Webmecanik team has assisted to the Web Summit event, 3 days of inspiring and rich conferences about tomorrow's marketing trends. An online edition, focused on the biggest challenges of our world, environment mobility, diversity, the newest technologies evolution and their impact on our society. More than 100 000 participants, 1 137 speakers like Eric Yua, founder of Zoom, Ursula Von Der Leyen president of European Commission or even Serena Wiliams were gathered on the event web platform.
The marketing key trends of 2021
Lucile Cons, our Marketing Manager, has assisted to many of these conferences in order to unearth the best trends for the coming year.
The pandemic impact on marketing
2020 has been a very particular year and will haunt the consumers' habits for the upcoming times. Our capacity for adaptation has been straining and if this is the case for any of us, companies had to adapt themselves in order to sell differently. Customer experience and trust are more than ever at the heart of concerns.
Creativity is what made some stand out from the crowd.
For example, Fashion Week has been able to reinvent itself very quickly, creating online events, each one crazier than the other ones. These usual very private events have, for some of them, opened up to the public and as the desire to belong to a group is very present in this disconcerting period, the image of the brands has been positively impacted.
The overall event spirit
The willingness to belong shows that the needs and customers levers have changed, or at least that the current changes have been accelerated and amplified.
From now on we pay attention to the company, beyond the brand: the cleanliness of the product, yes, but also the way employees are treated, the company's commitment on a daily basis. In fact, 85% of consumers certify that they no longer buy a product from a brand, or from a company in which they do not believe.
Talking about this I especially remember Mark Morris, Head of Digital Marketing at Burberry. For him, any marketing action must be told with passion. Corporate politics must reflect in the marketing and in the DNA of every product. This is what customers expect from a brand today, to know the values, the will and the brand’s history before purchasing its products.
From this Web Summit edition, the winning word was definitely durability : I haven’t attended any conferences where it hasn’t been stated. I remember this notion became an unmissable base. Strong long-term actions are still implemented and acclaimed. Levi’s, for example, announced at a conference that they are setting up a second-hand recycling and resale system.
Trust also goes beyond the values shared between the company and the consumer. There is also the exchange with the use of social media in particular: a privileged, personalised and two-way communication. Consumers want to be able to interact during the buying process and keep feeling special. The result: enhanced loyalty.
The news for your strategy :
From all these lessons emerged the novelties to not be missed for successful marketing in 2021:
Ephemeral content is highly preferred for engagement. The feeling of the present moment is really important.
Technological advancement also allows innovation: like fashion week, new things can be done to engage consumers. Store with connected mirrors, / Lamborghini (Katia Bassi) uses virtual reality to take cars to the consumer lounge.
Marketing automation to be able to dialogue more, by personalising and freeing up time for essential and much appreciated exchanges.
Management and Customer Success
Sophie Panot, our Marketing and Sales Director, was interested in conferences about work organisation and management during COVID times. She also gives you concrete advice on customer success and the best way to sell despite this crisis.
Management and remote work
While the whole world has experienced remote work, we are now well aware of its advantages and disadvantages. Reduced commute times, longer focus and less office space have their benefits, but can your teams be as performant? This was the issue raised by Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp & Jessi Hempel from Linkedin. His answer is yes, under certain conditions (remember that Basecamp is 100% remote).
The former understanding.
The first lockdown was for many of us the first time to work from home sometimes after 30 years of work at the office... It is therefore normal to need days, weeks and for some months to get used to it, to find advantages in this situation and to set the pace of working from home. You don’t have the time? You have to take it.
We must not neglect the difficulty that it can be to find ourselves at home to work and sometimes with children. Whoever wants to, is not a full-time worker or a part-time parent. It is sometimes difficult to work with normal hours, so be flexible.
The second condition is to equip yourself with the good tools.
Relax, forget all kinds of tracking, set smart goals and make regular updates: project launch and follow-up but also social points to find out how things are going, what is everyone doing, how they are living it ...
Jason Fried tells us: "be close to your team, in terms of team management, like a life coach who listens to them and digs a little when necessary to really know how things are going". He also tells us to “take this moment to reinvent the way we work”, “encourage your listening to-do, learn, start something new”. A new skill is always good for personal and team improvement!
Customer success tips
I’ll share with you 5 concrete and actionable techniques, suggested by Sandi Lin, CEO of Skilljar, to ensure that customer orientation is at the heart of the entire organisation - a priority that translates into 97% customer loyalty and an NPS score of 79.
Also, let's remember a statistic: you have a 20% chance of selling to a prospect versus an 80% chance of selling to a customer.
Define and follow the top priorities for your customers: market’s news, a new direction for your company, product feedback, account development. For this, a weekly meeting with the account managers, set CODIR to optimize the life of your clients or a customer matrix.
Listen to your customers: ask them quarterly and listen to their feedback.
Implement a quarterly customer retrospective: focus on themes, not just metrics, develop bottom-ups each quarter, identify cross recommendations and highly actionable trends.
Forecast for rolling six months: document the action plans against the risk of unsubscription, plan to bring together the Account Manager and Customer Success each time.
Calculate your annual NPS (Net Promoter Score): it is better to collect open comments and specific responses with verbatim analysis rather than a fixed scoring system.
Selling in times of crisis
How to maintain sales dynamics during the Covid-19 period? Bryan O’Connell, CEO of Huckleberry, the 100% online insurance service, gave us a few leads that Sophie also shares here:
Boost your software stack: that will help your team sell better (CRM, marketing automation, support, invoicing, etc.).
Don't fulfil emergency, that's what COVID is here for!
Respond head-on to the COVID objection, if you can do it, do it! Keep doing investments if you can because those who can, will do it.
Adjust your trade flow: Expect longer sales cycles. Try to keep a constant volume and to reduce the frequency of dips that you may experience by making courtesy calls, communicating more widely, etc…
Hyper-localize your strategy: Create content based on specific data, up to the region and the city level, examining how buyers find you and buy from you. In the retail world, hyper-localization can mean that stores adapt their offers to a local and trendy demand. Become a salesperson / advisor. Online retailers and websites may offer unique discount codes or promotions for specific regions like individual cities.
A good example of hyper-localization is when your local pizzeria offers pizzas for half price if your local football team wins. They take into account the interests of a local region and take advantage of it for a unique and engaging promotion.
We bear in mind one sentence: don’t forget, customer experience first ! Personalise your relationship with kindness.
Social media trends for 2021
Laurine Augiron, Communications Manager, listened carefully to the evolution of social media in 2020 and offers you an overview of social media trends to not be missed in 2021!
The social media while crisis
Social media has been a good way to keep contact and to express yourself during this delicate year. Most social media experienced a higher use when the COVID and the lockdown began.
53% of the worldwide population is using social media, which represents an augmentation of 12.5% in 2020, according to Hootsuite / We Are Social.
The networks have been an escape route to turn away from the burdensome reality but also an amplifier for committed messages (police violence, #BlackLiveMatter, ecological crisis ...) as well as an accelerator for the dissemination of information whether it is true... or fake.
This increased presence made it possible for brands to get closer to their consumers by implementing more in-depth conversational marketing than usual. We no longer seek to sell at any cost but rather to create a relationship with our audience by being present, by interacting regularly and by focusing on the moderation of our community.
We were also able to observe positions being taken by some companies about current topics. This approach can indeed bring customers closer to brands, but it is not without risk.
33% of consumers feel that they would buy more from a brand that takes a stand on social issues to which they are sensitive to, Falcon.io
Highlighting your company's activism can be a catalyst as long as what you say is consistent with your actions and values.
The key word for your strategy: creativity
"Social media is a space for sharing and exchanging. A way for some to escape from their daily lives and feel part of something bigger", reminds us Jeff D'Onofrio, CEO of Tumblr.
Content creation has never been so strong, especially with the rise of certain platforms such as TikTok or Twitch. Niche platforms on which Dino Kuckovic, Community Director at Falcon.io, advises us to bet on (only if they are adapted to your target) in view of the low competitive presence and low advertising costs..
Tiktok has more than 800 million active accounts in 2020, Datareportal
Video formats are still an essential online medium and the new formats allow increased interactivity and engagement.
An average of 100 minutes of online video per person per day is expected to be consumed in 2021, MarketingCharts
You were told in the introduction, ephemeral content is a growing trend. Social media is now seeing the popularity of these new raw formats explode, gradually replacing the overly perfect content of Instagram feeds. All platforms now have their story functionality: Snapchat the forerunner, Instagram and WhatsApp the leader in this category, Facebook, LinkedIn and even Twitter for some time now.
500 million accounts view Instagram stories every day, Facebook
The key components for the success of ephemeral content:
A less elaborate content.
A vertical format ready to film.
Spontaneity and authenticity, which help internet users to identify themselves more easily to your world.
Interactivity to nourish the relationship with your fans. Example on Instagram stories: voting module, questions, use of augmented reality filters created by your brand which is very popular (it is rare to see a story without a filter...)
FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) or the fear of missing out something. A bias that captures the attention of your audience. It is widely used in Story Ads with ultra-limited offers, but which can raise ethical questions.
Social commerce: evolution of the social commerce landscape
The pandemic has not only impacted the way we create social ties, but more importantly, it has accelerated the transition from business to e-commerce by 5 years and with it the emergence of social commerce (Techcrunch).
The most influential social media have quickly set up solutions to facilitate purchasing through their interfaces:
Instagram, the leader in the social commerce field with the tag of products on posts and soon an extension on IGTV and Reels.
Facebook Shop, launched in 2020, could become a real alternative to Amazon.
The button ‘Shop Now’ of TikTok in collaboration with certain brands or integration with the merchandising platform.
Hyper-personalisation is a key element for the success of social commerce. The analysis of its data to produce personalised and relevant content will allow you to offer an enhanced shopping experience. However, be careful not to go too far in this personalisation, which can have the opposite effect.
Social media is the new public relations
Social networks should not simply be seen as an advertising channel by brands, but should be taken into account in their press relations and content sharing strategy (nothing too new so far).
On the other hand, focus has been placed on the utility of influencers, brand ambassadors or brand communities that have the power to propel your brand's actions and messages.
They should no longer be seen simply as relays for your communication but rather as co-creators who will bring additional value to your messages. This will not only allow you to reach a more qualified audience (because your brand will have been recommended by these opinion leaders) but will also allow you to learn more about their preferences and improve your future actions.
Finally, measurement is the most important part of any action. It is necessary to put in place social media listening tools that will reveal to you:
What it is said about your brand
Insights on current news
A better understanding of your customers
Privacy and personal data
Carol Correia, our International Manager, shares with you her thoughts on the subjects of data management and privacy. A topic that is becoming increasingly important and on which everyone must remain vigilant!
Ethics and society
Again this year, data privacy subjects were very present. With COVID and following the development of tracking applications by different governments, data, in a global way, has been seen as the answer for everything. The more data, the better. In this context, the question on confidentiality and data protection is even more relevant.
We have seen that these contact cases tracking applications have been received with a lot of suspicion. They were seen as toxic technosolutions where the mix of public and private partnership raised questions about responsibility around these personal data.
These technologies related to personal data are not intuitive and many people think that it is total surveillance. It is therefore necessary to educate them. On the other hand, we cannot explain in detail the implementation, the collection and the technical specificities; it is the highly trusted mediators who must transmit these notions and this confidence. It is also important to integrate all parties involved and to bring them on board from the very early steps.
Personalisation, marketing and respect of privacy
There are entire business models based on data collection and suggested advertisements. This is called monitoring capitalism or attention economy: the idea is to keep us "captive" as long as possible, both to collect as much data about us as possible and to better sell their advertising space to advertisers.
Some people ask: in the internet jungle, who owns your data? But the real question is who controls your data. On this notion of ownership: it's your own data, but the problem is that you do not control it. It has to go beyond simply accepting ads through a pop-in.
Can privacy and personalisation coexist?
Personalised marketing grows with an accent on trust and transparency. These are two key values that are absolutely necessary for any type of business or activity. Give people control over their personal data! People are willing to give their data in exchange for a pleasant and personalised experience, but they need to trust you first.
This is why data protection plays a central role in a digital strategy, especially in Europe. Speakers on this topic call for transparency, users control, data protection from the very beginning, awareness and responsibility.
All these questions and challenges are becoming urgent with the rapid spread of the IoT (Internet Of Things) in these ecosystems of connected objects.
Takeaways
The whole discussion about data privacy is very broad and should not be conducted solely between data protection officers or lawyers specialising in this field, but rather with technologists, scientists, product and risk teams. This conversation, which is no longer limited to legislative compliance, should be refocused on one key issue: the ethical use of data…
It is necessary to change the laws and to change the way some technologies are constructed and to regulate them.
Think carefully about where your company stores its data. And be careful to avoid hosting them where human rights abuses occur. Create an obligation to be accountable.
Open source, a smart choice!
Open source tools are the winning choice for scaling strategy with respect to users' privacy.
A new horde of softwares has conquered the world and is now a reality. World-class for-profit companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter are now major contributors and users of the revolutionary wave of OSS (Open Source Software), even though a few years ago this was simply unthinkable.
Open source is a real hope for privacy. Nowadays, people don't know what code works in their operating system, the more open source we have, the better our understanding will be about what the software does, what kind of data we receive and send out.
As a conclusion, we can never say it enough, this year has really changed not only our consumption habits but also our way of thinking. More than ever before, people, trust and values must be at the heart of any strategy, whether in marketing, communication or even in management.
Sustainability is also the winning word for our future. However, there is no question of using this argument as a differentiator. It must now be part of the DNA of every company.
Finally, data and the protection of privacy are subjects on which companies must be transparent in order to create real trust between you and your customers.
We hope that this advice will be useful for the construction of your 2021 strategy, and we look forward to seeing you next year!
Carol CorreiaInternational Director at Webmecanik
Helping our customers to deploy kick-ass marketing automation strategy around the world.
