In the coming decade, there will be ever-increasing opportunities for brands to connect with their customers in more convenient, relevant, and meaningful ways.
The surge in at-home work, forced by the pandemic, has seen the use of gaming consoles, streaming services, and video conferencing platforms increase across the market, and even brands who already have multi-device content marketing strategies in place are considering a broader channel mix.
As brands continue driving towards ease, convenience, and (where appropriate) fun, they will need to integrate content across various platforms to create a frictionless, inclusive experience for customers.
Marketers will also need to balance compelling content distribution with go-to-market simplicity, so brands can easily showcase their products and services across a growing array of new digital storefronts.
The need for diverse voices
Facing an audience of Generation Z and Generation Alpha adults, who will have been brought up with cancel culture, brands will need to authentically champion and respect diversity and inclusion. They will also need to diversify the voices within their content to better represent and engage with their communities.
From communicating to predicting
We are all familiar with those spookily accurate “if-you-liked-that-you’ll-love-this” ads. But, in the next decade, we will see a shift from communicating possibility to predicting probability. Marketers will be able to serve precise content that anticipates consumer need. This data-led messaging will drive sales with pinpointed cross-selling and upselling recommendations. We can expect that retailers will know their consumers so well, that they can move to predictive ordering.
Deeper data will also open up content marketing opportunities between brands and sectors. Marketers will start to think of their brands as interconnected service hubs for their customers. For example, a telemedicine platform could provide marketing opportunities for related brands like life insurance, health food, or fitness companies.
AI powers on, but human is still king
In the next decade, content marketers will use AI for enhanced logic, testing, and analysis of data, while the human brain will be freed up to do what it does best – think creatively and innovate.
Digital personalisation has already transformed the consumer experience, and this will continue to evolve into “mass personalisation” – the ability for brands to appear to be talking one-on-one with consumers on a huge scale.
Mass personalisation will be augmented by data-driven micro-moments (those moments in time when the brand is actually connecting individually with a consumer) in order to inject the much-needed human element into a fully automated process. Brands that get this right will see their loyalty surge.
Companies will need to hire and develop talented teams who can interpret data into meaningful consumer experiences and use design thinking to solve customer pain points and predict unmet needs.
Alicja Lloyd is deputy chief executive at Feed
