In this guest post, Sian Jenkins, marketing director, APAC at Genesys, shares what is up and coming in the marketing industry and what marketers should be doing about it.
The world as we know it has undergone a huge transformation over the past few years. Emerging from the grip of the pandemic in 2022, we now find ourselves facing a period of economic instability not seen in Australia for more than 30 years.
Businesses are facing increasing costs, a tight labour market, a possible recession, rising interest rates and inflation.
There’s plenty for marketers to be aware of as they attempt to connect with new target audiences and their evolving needs. With marketing and customer experience (CX) becoming more interconnected than ever, businesses must stay ahead of the trends if they want to remain competitive and deliver value to customers in the rapidly changing digital landscape.
Against this backdrop and with CX as the new battleground, the importance of offering personalised experiences, the convergence of marketing and CX, and the impact of purpose-driven marketing, have become increasingly critical to executing effective campaigns and appealing to consumers.
Here are my top three marketing predictions for 2023 and beyond.
1. AI is driving personalisation
Customers want to feel heard, understood and remembered by the brands they engage with, which means that marketers need to find smarter ways to personalise their campaigns and messaging across all channels and touch points.
Deloitte found only 30 per cent are happy with the way Australian brands are delivering personalisation, so it’s clear there’s much work to be done by businesses to orchestrate customer journeys that are frictionless and meaningful. It is now essential for companies to look to the future of personalisation and how technology can be instrumental in providing a personalised experience and real-time engagement.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help to deliver deeper personalisation at scale. It can be used to record and extract information from a customer’s previous interactions with a brand and feed this into the design of future campaigns or offers that are highly targeted and relevant to that particular individual.
This is a trend we see accelerating this year, with 90 per cent of companies saying they are deploying AI across at least one aspect of their marketing mix. AI will bring conversational marketing to the fore and allow customer interactions at a more personal level.
2. Increased integration between marketing and CX
As consumers interact with brands before they have even become customers, it is important for companies to understand the full lifecycle of the consumer experience and view the customer journey holistically. There can no longer be a “handing off” of the customer to another team once they progress from being a prospect to becoming a customer.
According to Genesys-sponsored research by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 81 per cent of executives surveyed say being able to measure the customer experience along key points of the customer journey is important to their organisation’s business strategy. However, only 20 to 40 per cent of respondents were satisfied with their organisation’s ability to leverage CX metrics for the insights and outcomes they really want.
With the proliferation of digital channels and our propensity as consumers to ‘channel hop’, brands must connect the customer journey across all touch points and carry the context of customer interactions across all channels. All channels must be owned and managed by the same team to ensure a seamless customer experience and there must also be a strong link between pre- and post-sale channels.
It is critical to foster relationships with teams that have functional ownership of each journey touchpoint and understand the data and insights that are being captured at every point of interaction. There is a significant amount of customer insights that can be gleaned from customer service teams and in particular, the contact centre, which should be viewed much more strategically than it is today.
A contact centre today provides an opportunity to forge closer relationships and deeper connections with customers and foster greater trust. The convergence of marketing and CX, breaking down silos across these two functions, will help organisations in leveraging this data to improve marketing campaigns as well as the customer experience.
3. Purpose-led marketing is on the rise
To maintain a competitive edge in the current business environment, companies need to find a balance between delivering technological efficiencies, empathetic experiences and value-laden services through both their product offerings, and their brand values. Consumers are becoming more conscious about an organisation’s purpose and are beginning to hold organisations to account for their social and environmental responsibilities.
We’ve seen more companies speak out on important societal matters, including Genesys CEO Tony Bates, who has publicly shared the organisation’s position about critical issues impacting the company’s employees and communities. Conversely, Gina Rineheart’s company, Hancock Prospecting’s sponsorship of Netball Australia team the Diamonds was withdrawn as their unethical stance on indigenous issues has damaged the brand to the point that a sporting organisation does not want to be associated with it.
More generally, companies now have a greater focus on sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). For example, one of Genesys’ goals is to be carbon neutral by 2030. Resonating with customers by making a genuine commitment to a purpose is extremely important for companies today, with 66 per cent of high-growth brands being more likely to see purpose as a means to guiding employee decision-making. This emphasises how it is now essential to design campaigns and customer journeys with inclusion in mind and an authentic brand purpose.
It is crucial for brands to develop their authentic voice in this area with inclusive marketing principles, as consumers are savvy and aware of business ‘washing’. Attempting to align with purpose disingenuously or leveraging a particular issue for business advantage will only result in damage to the brand.
In 2023, businesses must remain privy to upcoming trends and take advantage of them to improve operations. These trends reveal that customer retention and loyalty are driven by their experience with the brand. Companies should strive towards an integrated, personalised and purpose-led approach where sales, marketing, and customer support all work in unison to provide a seamless customer journey.
