What brands should consider in the new year 2022

Any company can fight for the consumer equally successfully, even if it is a small coffee shop near the house that sells handmade sweets. The categories of businesses that sell goods online are expanding: if previously it was mainly clothing and equipment, today groceries, ready-made food and even medicines from the pharmacy will be delivered to you in 15 minutes. Consumer needs are also changing; they are not willing to wait a long time for delivery or spend a lot of time searching. In such conditions, companies need to reconsider marketing strategies and approaches to interacting with customers. 

Customer experience is the key to business growth

The accelerated transition of business online over the past two years has become a challenge for many companies. It is no longer possible to remain only offline, but to fight for clients on the Internet, new investments and changes in approaches are needed. First of all, it is necessary to focus on improving the customer experience. In this direction, three main blocks can be distinguished.

Quality of service or product. If your service is not able to solve the client’s problem the first time within a few minutes, and delivery takes several days, you are most likely already a loser in a highly competitive market. Creating fast and reliable digital solutions is impossible without technological infrastructure and expertise. A high-quality product and fast service are a hygienic minimum, without which it will be difficult to retain even a loyal customer.

Value. In a highly competitive environment, the added value for the client from the business side is especially important. It becomes even more relevant in the context of working with customer data. Research shows that users are willing to share their data with businesses if they receive additional benefits in return. But it’s not enough to give it once (for example, a discount for a subscription); value must be created throughout the entire customer journey. These could be useful digital services, unique content, prizes, gifts, stickers on social networks and other options.

Personalization. Today, the average person uses several information channels at once: email, SMS, several social networks, instant messengers, search engines, marketplaces, classified ads, media, etc. To effectively attract and engage customers, brands need to build personalized communication in different channels, taking into account past experience user interaction. At the same time, direct channels offer the highest personalization opportunities. And high-quality work with data and marketing automation will allow you to get the maximum effect from investments in promotion.

Working with data is not an added value, but a necessity

Despite the fact that there is a lot of talk about working with data everywhere, the maturity of the market is still very low. There are companies that generate a huge amount of their own data, and only a few know how to efficiently collect, store and structure it, and most importantly, manage it. In most cases, business and marketing have to work with disparate tools and types of data to solve individual problems, which is not always successful.

How is data used in marketing today? For example, you can collect and store customer data in a CDP (Customer Data Platform), segment it for different business tasks and profile the audience based on key characteristics. Technology and data can also be useful for predicting audience behavior or changing business metrics, improving the accuracy of ad targeting, or connecting external segments of vendor data.

On the other hand, many companies are still cautious about working with data, and this is a big mistake. Making decisions based on human hypotheses is no longer effective - the risk is too high. And in the context of the global trend toward data privacy, opportunities to work with external or 3rd party data will become less and less.

What should a business do? If you have the resources and ambition to become a data expert yourself, develop this area internally. If there are doubts and risks along this path, then it is worth betting on the development of strategic partnerships with those companies that already have expertise in solving your business problems using data. Partnerships will help solve this problem faster and with less losses.

It is important to understand that everyone will have to work with customer data. A global study by BCG and Google shows that brands that do a better job with customer data are more successful in growing sales and market share. The faster you can solve the problem of working with data securely and efficiently, the higher the likelihood that you will not lose to competitors tomorrow.

Social commerce - the new endless shelf for sales

The user’s path has changed: if previously the main platform for searching for goods was classic search engines, today it is easier to immediately go to a social network or marketplace and look for a product where you can immediately buy it. This dynamic is especially relevant for young people: 53.2% of the population of customers aged 16−24 years old study information about brands on social networks (and 51.3% on search engines). In 2020, the global social commerce market was valued at $474.8 billion. By 2028, it is projected to grow to $3,370 billion, growing at 28.4% per year.

E-commerce platforms, on the one hand, are developing delivery, logistics and payment services, and on the other hand, they strive to increase the time that the user spends on them. Marketplaces create tools to engage users: online streaming, game mechanics, mini-applications on social networks, opportunities for communication on the site.

Social networks, in turn, are developing more and more tools for selling goods and services on their resources and promoting them natively in content familiar to users. For example, mini-applications, interactive formats or mechanics for purchasing goods from content, which allow users to go straight from posts and videos to the product card in the store. Thus, social networks are becoming key platforms where businesses can not only communicate with users, but also create a unique customer experience and drive sales.

Brands need to be strategic about sales development and promotion across social and e-commerce channels. Competition on an endless shelf is not limited by the quantity of goods (SKU), and small and micro businesses can successfully compete with any mass brand. It is important not only to use performance tools, but also to invest in image promotion, since brand strength can become a long-term competitive advantage in online sales channels.

The need for measurable marketing performance is taking a new turn. If previously everyone talked about the visibility of advertising and the quality of traffic, today these criteria can be considered default. Companies need technologies and tools that help them work with data from different sources and measure the impact of investments in actual sales online and offline.

A flexible IT infrastructure of end-to-end technologies and integrated solutions will play an important role in this direction. This will allow you to build and automate end-to-end analytics, analyze results and their relationship with business activities in real time, and quickly make decisions to optimize processes. For us, as one of the market leaders, this is also an important strategic vector of development.

Today, marketing uses a huge number of tools, sources and types of data. To create the infrastructure that allows them to integrate with each other, it is important for companies to choose long-term partners they trust and who have expertise in working with data and technology.

Focus on social projects is the basis for strengthening brand positioning

People's interest in socially responsible brands is growing, and the last two years have accelerated this trend. This is especially important for generation Z: they trust companies investing in this area more and will determine demand and trends in the market in the coming years.

An ESG and social agenda can help a brand communicate its mission and strengthen its positioning. But when forming a social agenda, it is important not to forget that the company’s projects and activities must bring real benefits.

For example, McDonald's is investing in separate collection at its plants and in recycling. We are also developing a large number of social initiatives - from the Dobro Mail.ru platform and the Day against Cyberbullying to investments in educational projects for people of different ages. And we help our partners create social projects and digital products that help millions of users.

To summarize, it is important to once again emphasize that improving the customer experience is the key to the growth of any business that wants to remain competitive. Today, the market offers technologies that can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty quickly and effectively, including through personalized communication and working with data and analytics. Therefore, brands need to actively develop these areas in order to stay afloat in the race for a modern, but demanding buyer.