Outlook for brand marketing trends in 2022!

During the epidemic, "growth" is less easy and difficult than at any other time. The dividends of "digitalization" can bring breakthroughs to enterprises, which is still quite vital due to its "innovative" nature. However, the degree and way of its popularity have begun to make business managers and marketing professionals think in new ways due to the popularity of the concept of "metaverse" this year.

Think about this question: What trends will there be in digital marketing in 2022? If you are developing a marketing strategy for the next three years, what should you do? You have a budget of 10 million. As a marketing decision maker, where would you invest it?

01In an era of uncertainty, the essence of enterprises pursuing "growth" will not change

Growth can be divided into "short-term" growth and "long-term" growth. The growth here refers to growth that pursues "long-termism". Thinking about tomorrow's pattern from the perspective of the day after tomorrow, and thinking about today's problems with tomorrow's pattern is true long-termism.

"Long-term" growth focuses on creating lifelong value for customers. Companies that pursue long-term growth may suffer losses in the short term. For example, Tesla has been dragged down by the word "loss" in the early years. Although it can be said to be a thorough disruptive innovation for the entire automotive industry, its technological innovation, marketing (Tesla does not spend money on advertising), market introduction model (eliminating dealers), user experience, and flexible supply chain built on demand can be said to be unprecedented, the major breakthroughs it has achieved have triggered a large number of new energy brands to imitate it, and the latecomers are facing fierce market competition.

Tesla has maintained a very positive growth trend since it turned losses into profits in 2018. Even though its factories were closed due to the epidemic, its current market value has reached 150 billion US dollars, which is higher than the total market value of Volkswagen, Toyota, and General Motors, the three century-old traditional automobile industry giants combined.

Therefore, short-term losses and short-term investments can be sustained growth in the long term. I have always emphasized that " digital marketing " is linked to "growth". Digital marketing is a cost center and marketing center in the short term. In the long term, it can continuously empower the company's growth and play a greater role.

02Using digital marketing as an engine to drive the improvement of enterprise organization and management

What are the characteristics of companies that pursue long-term growth? What companies need to focus on creating is "structured" growth, and marketing is an important part of it. Structural innovation in marketing is primarily manifested in the digitalization of marketing. Using marketing digitalization to drive model improvements in corporate organization and management dimensions is another major significance of digital marketing.

The problem that marketing has always been about is: how to better market the company’s brand and products? Gain the favor of consumers or customers? In the digital age, the mission of digital marketing has become: How to use digital marketing to solve the problems of marketing scale effect and efficiency improvement? These are some of the business dilemmas that digital marketing can solve, which are obvious to all.

From a higher and broader perspective, can digital marketing solve bigger problems? I think so. It can drive structural innovation in enterprises, which is reflected in innovation in thinking and management model.

At the product marketing level, product updates and iterations used to rely more on the speed and contribution of the R&D team. Today, rapid product upgrades keep up with market demand. Companies conduct big data analysis on real-time feedback from consumers on digital channels, and use digital tools to capture and communicate within the company in a more efficient manner, which speeds up innovation and is more in line with market demand.

In terms of channel innovation, the rise and development momentum of social e-commerce cannot be underestimated. At present, many B2B companies are still channel-oriented, and the sales contribution ratio of channel distributors remains high. In the digital age, the channel department needs to cooperate more closely with the company's marketing center.

The essence of "social e-commerce" is social marketing + e-commerce sales, and both are indispensable. Social marketing requires intensive marketing of brands on social media and continuous output of brand influence, so this needs to be done by brands. For the e-commerce part, whether it adopts the supply chain model of direct supply by enterprises or the way of opening stores by online dealers, big data marketing is the only way for enterprises to make major decisions such as what products to sell, what price, and how to adjust operating strategies.

At the promotion and communication level, digital marketing has become the mainstream under the epidemic, whether it is acquiring new users or operating and managing existing users. Consumers' media consumption preferences have shifted to digital channels, and the rules of information dissemination have changed. In the new media era, the media environment is more numerous, fragmented, and faster. The relationships between users, mainstream media, and self-media are intertwined into a network. Any user can become self-media, and they, like a brand, can also have their own fans and users.

The relationship between self-media and users is closer. They understand what their fans want and can get feedback from users quickly. Many brands have begun to shift from leveraging the influence of opinion leaders to cultivating their own self-media. The opinion leaders they cultivate influence the minds of consumers and customers through a large amount of corporate core knowledge and professional output. At the same time, they also provide companies with valuable content marketing materials that can be inherited, which can be precipitated and disseminated as knowledge.

03 While increasing investment in digital marketing, companies are more pragmatic

There are many areas of digital marketing investment, and the components are also complex. Digital marketing strategy, digital media purchase, creative production, live broadcast, content marketing, social marketing, marketing technology, big data marketing, and even e-commerce are all within the scope of digital marketing. If you want to implement a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, consolidate its implementation, and create an end-to-end digital marketing closed loop, then the investment will be huge. Different from the previous focus on "performance marketing", there is nothing wrong with "performance marketing" itself. What companies need to think about is whether the performance marketing expenses will be wasted in the long run, and how to balance short-term and long-term input-output.

In the future, companies will choose to focus their investments on areas that can generate the greatest return on investment in the long term, such as digital infrastructure and digital innovation methods. In many large enterprises, digital asset maintenance will be given more attention. Breaking down data silos, being customer-centric, and connecting data between business units will become a top priority. This echoes the second point mentioned above and will drive innovation in organizational models and the entire way of working.

At the same time, on the one hand, corporate marketing budgets are tightening, but in areas that can generate innovation dividends, companies will be more willing to invest. Each of the seven levels of the metaverse can have digital marketing innovation, experience, discovery, creation, spatial computing, decentralization, and infrastructure, which are also the basic elements of marketing in the digital age. The future integration of the concepts of digital marketing and the metaverse will give the former greater room for development.

In the B2B field, digital marketing still has a lot of room for growth. Due to its development history and the accumulation of business models, products and sales still dominate the management model of enterprises. In the future, it will be a general trend to use new marketing methods to drive organizational and management changes.

Author: Ah, you definitely don’t know

Source: Ah, you definitely don’t know