Any form of marketing begins with knowing and understanding your customer segment. However, the cardinal rule still applies, the customer is king. Owing to this, marketers have made it a point to cater almost entirely to the consumer. The need to understand and anticipate future customers is higher than ever because the end users of almost every company’s product or service are shifting, and at a significant rate.

While the evolution of marketing has been rapid, here are some that we have noticed as key changes:

Rise of marketing research

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This trend is predominantly an effect of the above mentioned point. With changing consumers comes the need to increase marketing research; both in quantity and also in scope. A big part of this involves development of market potential coupled with analysis of buying and spending habits, followed by development of sales territories. This is needed to know when consumers are migrating, where they are migrating to and why.

Catering to different demographics  

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COVID-19. What a game changer, it has been for the digital space. While millennials have always been in the lead to run to the online market, this shift has slowly percolated to the previous generations, making it a challenge for marketers to penetrate that market. This led to marketers ensuring that brand shows strong availability to everyone while continuing to convey the value. The increase in promotional activity is now curated to customers’ focus, considering that it varies heavily on the age and also earning capacity.

Value for money

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With supplemental competition across every vertical and industry, marketers are not only finding it increasingly difficult to keep evolving to bring in new customers, but also in retaining the old ones. This is especially true when it comes to essentials considering that their availability is in far more abundance across other brands. From something as simple as evaluating the performance of small change in packaging to something as complex as pricing a product, marketers will always have to keep the following in mind: the customer WILL leave if you’re not keeping up with their price point.

‍Test Marketing

With the aim to bring down errors in marketing changes, this change has been an effect of rising costs of marketing. Packaging, advertising and promotions are all elements of marketing that drain the bank account a lot faster than you can anticipate. A controlled experimentation of marketing is now being seen as necessary to ensure that the heavy R&D investments made are paying off.

While marketers are constantly working on reevaluating and reprioritising their targets, they are also learning to bring in some of the best experiences to the table. And why is that? Because the customer is king!

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