As we help our clients look at the landscape in 2022, we wanted to share some of the insights that we felt will be most valuable to businesses next year. These are less about tactics and more about how you can get the most growth out of a strong marketing plan based on how we see buyers and markets reacting over the past three to six months.
Drive Growth with Current Customers
The number one place to drive growth next year should be with your current customers. Whether it’s been supply chain issues, customer experience challenges, or the overwhelming marketing noise out there, buyers have about had enough. The interest in loyalty is at extremely high levels – it makes life so much easier right now. So how do you take advantage? Are you looking at new product launches? Take them to your current customer base first, and maybe while in the final stages develop a stronger rollout plan for new customers. Don’t have anything on the drawing board? Then use your year-end review meetings to find out what similar products and services your customers are struggling to have fulfilled.
Engaging Personal Interactions
Second, on the list, it’s time to develop plans that bring you back to personal interactions with your key customer. Here’s where marketing can align with sales to bring a series of contacts that lead to meaningful personal interactions. We’ve heard and seen that trade shows and events are seeing increased attendance again, but that’s the superficial piece. What buyers are now looking for is focused use of their time at these events. Building out a communication plan that targets potential customers and invites them to visit you to learn meaningful takeaways is what most attendees are looking for. Following – up with hyper-focused messages and a path to an agenda-driven meeting with sales is the way to close more deals from these events. The hybrid world has shown buyers they don’t need to waste time anymore being looky-loos’ but most still want that personal meeting, especially on larger dollar items.
Use Data Wisely
Our third trend to be focused on in 2022 is to put your data in the user’s context. Over the past year, it’s been harder to develop traditional white papers and case studies. So many businesses are using any data they can to try and prove value – in many cases these are very broad numbers that don’t really drive down to ROI. Or they use ratings that can be manipulated or filtered to meet their needs. Buyers are becoming more discerning; the initial onslaught of numbers that look great is not enough. Can you put the performance or savings into context of a business like theirs? We see it all the time with lead services promising lower costs of leads – that sparked interest early in the pandemic. Now business leaders realize that it’s not about the cost of the leads, it’s about the quality and total costs to gain that opportunity.
Return of the Testimonial
Our fourth and final trend to consider in 2022 is the return of the testimonial. While White Papers and Case Studies take time to develop, customer testimonials can be produced in a shorter time frame. They can also use some of the more effective trends in marketing today such as short-form videos and within podcasts. There’s no question influencer marketing is growing as well, but that can be challenging to develop and manage. The difference in testimonials is they aren’t paid and utilize new or long-time customers. That doesn’t mean you can’t reward a customer with tickets to an event or other reason thank you, but you are not paying them for their willingness to speak on camera or have a quote on your website. If you think about all of these trends together, you can build a nice portfolio of messages for your business from your current customers as you help them grow.
We hope you think about these points first before you dive into some of the trends with marketing tactics for 2022. Looking at your strategy and aligning that with marketing plans is far more effective than jumping on the latest marketing ploy. For example, it’s certainly not dead, but Clubhouse hasn’t created the promise many were calling for just nine short months ago. As always, if you want to talk more about your needs or get an assessment of where you stand for 2022 reach out at tjobe@randinc.cc.
