By Dove Direct on Friday, 28 January 2022
Category: 2022 Marketing Industry Trends

The Evolution of Marketing in 2022

Welcome to the Dove Direct Print and Marketing Blog. Today's post, "The Evolution of Marketing in 2022," depicts how marketing concepts and strategies continue to evolve, spurred in large part by buyer persona reboots brought forth by the effects of the pandemic.  While traditional aspects of B2B marketing strategic concepts such as prospecting, phone calls, emails, and meetings continue to be the primary fallback strategy for landing new business, that success rate is less than 2% and falling. That diminishing number should be a wake-up call for all B2B marketing managers. Part of the challenge is the flood of available information, which hinders meeting confirmations and simultaneously reduces the seller's influence.

In previous posts, we discussed how marketing evolves, aided with technological advancements, new social media channels, and changing media usage trends. However, for the foreseeable future, more emphasis will be placed on understanding the buyer, along with any new marketing concepts such as "utilitarianism marketing." B2B brands need to ask several questions about potential buyers. For example, What are my buyers doing? What is affecting them? How are they managing their responsibilities? Under normal conditions, buyers will generally answer those questions, which means that you have an opportunity to place yourself in their shoes. That is a powerful position for a marketer. To be in the role of the buyer, who can and will appreciate that the brand cares enough to understand their challenges and pain points and how to solve those problems. 





Our Quote of the Day: 
"Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service." — Brian Tracy





Selling Versus Providing Information


As far back as the late 1980s, top sales performers understood that the art of successful selling hinged on the ability to provide prospects with just enough information that the window of opportunity would allow the prospect to sell themselves on the value of the brand's product or service. In short, with the correct information the prospect could realize the benefits and sell themselves on the offering. Of course, this was the late 1980s. The world was less information-driven, nor did we have the plethora of social media platforms or technologies that could multi-function across a set of applications. However, we did have basic computers that support crunching and analyzing statistical data.

In today's overcrowded marketing world, 10,000 incoming marketing messages far exceeds the human capacity to read, categorize, and respond to several, let alone, all of those messages. According to the 1% thin-theory, only 1% of those who receive a marketing message will need that product when they see the message.

Therefore, it is critical that brands and sales staff incorporate a marketing strategy that informs rather than sells while simultaneously offering some potential value that customers will appreciate. This concept of value selling falls in line with the holistic movement of brands. 



Contacting Prospects Has Evolved



The strain of doing business the traditional way is under assault, especially in light of the Covid-variants, including the one on the horizon known as "Stealth Omicron." As a result, prospects no longer wish to be contacted in the same old fashion ways. Prospects are less inclined to meet for coffee, doughnuts, or bagels on location. Most texts, calls, and email solicitations generally go unanswered or are trashed. More importantly, the majority of reliable contacts are inbound.

According to Tom Stanfill, founding partner of ASLAN Training and Development, the technique of understanding what each buyer is trying to accomplish and then building a plan based on their goals and timelines is the key to achieving your ultimate goal of building a longstanding relationship, as opposed to a "one off." 

Sellers need to be "other-centered," Stanfill says. "They need to understand what's on the decision-maker's whiteboard and demonstrate their desire and ability to help them solve their problem."
 





The Evolving Buyer Journey



When examining the print buyer's journey, it is critical for sales teams to take the lead and guide prospects through the buying journey. 

The following three points should become the backbone of that print buyer journey strategy:

Problem Solving: When inbound prospects contact your organization, be ready to help solve the problem. Your ability to put forth creative solutions should be in the conversation.

Marketing: You must trust your ratings and online content. You should have a solid marketing leadership foundation. These are the aspects that your organization must continually maintain. Without this aspect, the only inbound traffic will be word of mouth, which is essential but represents a very small number. Today, everything is inbound, and authenticity is vital.

Relationship Building: After converting inbound leads to customers, the focus shifts to maintaining a level of trust. In the traditional sense, this means having a good product, good communication, and avoiding the "surprise" factor, eroding trust.



Utilitarianism Marketing
What is Utilitarianism Marketing? In short, this type of marketing can be helpful while simultaneously delivering your marketing message. Utilitarianism marketing supports presenting an authentic, selfless appearance at what folks may need and taking action to help close their problems to make their lives easier and better.

For example, let's look at IBM's Smarter Cities campaign, which industry insiders declare is imaginative advertising. The campaign focuses on a range of benches, ramps, and shelters, created to be eye-catching and useful for city dwellers. The idea of the campaign is to attract people to IBM's forum to share ideas on how to build and empower smarter cities, resulting in the production of some smart-city ideas of their own. The campaign was a win-win for both the city occupants and IBM, clearly benefiting all parties from a utilitarian viewpoint.


How to Create Utilitarianism Marketing
Creating utilitarianism marketing consists of several clear cut goals, including:


Position your resources behind inspiring advocacy and nurturing positive word of mouth rather than creating short-term one-off marketing campaigns.


The Net-Net

In 2022 marketing concepts will continue to evolve while waiting for no one. However, successful business ideology has taught us to break the old mold and rebuild them better. That saying, "If it's not broke, then let it be," deserves another viewpoint which is "If it's not broke, break it now and rebuild better." The pandemic has shown us that change can happen in the blink of an eye, which implores us to continuously take stock of what's going on. The evolution of marketing and the challenges of this new decade requires us to expect more trust while increasing transparency.  Thanks for reading "The Evolution of Marketing in 2022!"



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