With ever-growing competition and increasingly demanding consumers, companies must adjust their business practices if they want to be successful.

Corporations must speed up their organizational changes to adapt to the marketing of tomorrow. Technology, data science and AI are all opening up a new world of possibilities.

It is understandable that organizations get sidetracked from focusing on the consumer’s viewpoint because of overwhelming internal administrative and operational issues. However, past success should not blind companies to the opportunities and challenges ahead. For those companies that are increasingly dependent on promotional activity in order to regain or maintain market share, it should be obvious that the perceived value of their offerings is in decline and that new marketing strategies are needed. To regain and sustain the competitive advantage, either more innovation is necessary and/or fundamental changes in go-to-market strategies must be made. In today’s context this means less product marketing and more branding dominated by customer-cultivating approaches.

The business landscape is becoming more real, more human, and more authentic. The higher the social and environmental benefits and the deeper the emotional connections in your marketing strategy, the more relevant, meaningful and trustworthy your offerings become. Increasingly, consumers embrace brands that prove to be sensitive to this reality.

References

Ted Levitt, “On Marketing”, Harvard Business Review, September-October 1966|
Stan Davis, “Lessons From the Future – Making Sense of a Blurred World”, Capstone Publishing Ltd., 2001, 123
B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, “The Experience Economy”, Harvard Business School Press, 1999