The Next Decade Of Marketing: Change Will Be The Only Constant

As Bob Dylan famously said, “the times they are a-changing”. And according to HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar [feature image], the change is only starting.

2020 marks the start of a new decade, and what a turbulent start it has been. As the world grapples with a serious health crisis, none of us are sure what the other side will look like. The best we can do is support each other to learn about and adapt to our “new normal.”

One thing we are sure of, is that buyers have changed dramatically in the last 10 years, and while we can’t predict what will happen next, we know that even more change is coming.

For marketers, this means learning how to reach buyers in a fast-changing world. Earlier this year, we surveyed 3,400 marketers on their strategies, successes, and where they’re looking next. We hope that these findings are useful to understand the change that’s ahead of us all.

The changing nature of disruption

It was just a decade ago that social media platforms were starting to gain traction, and now they’re a foundational part of our daily lives, and an essential aspect of almost every marketing strategy. A lot has changed in ten years, including the businesses you’re competing with.

Today, the competitive landscape is more fierce than ever — there are countless disruptions happening across every industry. Ten years ago, businesses won by selling a product 10 times better than the competition. Today, businesses win and lose because of their customer experience, and the incumbents are getting taken down by companies who provide a better experience from end to end.

These companies represent a new breed of growth leader that gets ahead by completely disrupting and reinventing the treatment we’ve come to expect out of companies as consumers. At HubSpot, we refer to them as experience disruptors, and I think Australia has produced some excellent examples of these companies, with Canva being one of the best. I predict that these companies will stand even firmer in today’s climate of uncertainty.

Marketers should be the architects of customer experience

As marketers, every touchpoint we have with buyers is an opportunity to impress. But to do this, businesses need marketing strategies that support the entire customer lifecycle.

Increasingly vocal buyers, easily replicable products, and eroding trust in businesses mean that a delighted customer base is more influential in driving growth than any marketer or salesperson. But too often we see businesses focusing on customer acquisition at the expense of retention — but this strategy will see you miss out on a huge growth opportunity.

It’s here that rich attribution reporting can support you. Ten years ago, closed-loop reporting was impossible for many marketers. Today, rich attribution is available to all, but is not quite yet the norm. Currently, only 52 per cent of marketers use some form of attribution reporting.

Marketers are facing a technology barrier, but that’s starting to change

Rich attribution enables marketers to make better business decisions. One of the most important metrics to track is the return on investment of marketing activities. Only 35 per cent of our respondents replied that it is “very important” or “extremely important” to understand the ROI of any given campaign.

That’s low, but I don’t think the outstanding 65 per cent is avoiding it. They’re facing a technology barrier that’s preventing them from measuring their work. Most software that’s built for marketers isn’t quite powerful enough to capture this, and the software that is sophisticated enough requires heavy IT or developer support. But this is starting to change, allowing more marketers to access the insights rich attribution affords, but within a simple user interface that’s easy to learn.

How the current health crisis might shape our future

Now, I can’t end this piece without addressing a question that’s top of mind for lots of marketing leaders at the moment: how will the current global health crisis we’re experiencing shape our profession in 2020 and beyond? I’ll share my early thoughts on what I think we might see happen, all of which are up for discussion and debate.

1. Doing business online will go from being a good idea to a requirement

I believe this will be especially true for companies who are yet to prioritise this, and are unfortunately feeling the effects of not being set up for doing business online right now. I think we will see every business over the next few years adopting online tools like CRM, payments, document signing, etc. That means in-house marketers and agencies alike will need to become more technically-minded in order to orchestrate these customer experiences.

2. Remote work will become a 1st class citizen 

People will realise they can leverage technology to transform how they work and live and this will set off a decade long transformation. For marketers, as a profession our jobs lend themselves to remote work better than most. I expect to see a rise in the amount of open marketing positions where remote work is encouraged, and I think this will happen sooner rather than later.

3. Humans will be kinder to each other

I sincerely hope this prediction is correct, and that we come out of this with greater empathy for each other. I hope we see this effect in business too, in the form of more companies doing the right thing by their customers and employees, even when it’s hard.

As we enter the next decade of marketing, only one thing is certain: more change is coming for our profession. We’ll all need to be adaptable, resilient, and stay laser-focused on the customer experience to succeed.