16th November, 2017

2018’s top disruptive marketing trends

If you want to stand out in today’s crowded marketplace, you need to think outside the box and challenge convention.

Disruptive marketing is about changing consumers long held perceptions of brands and marketplaces through out-thinking and out-innovating competitors. It’s about giving access to your brand that traditional marketing fails to do. Enable your customers to connect and engage won a more personal level, meeting their demands to become part of the conversation. Is your marketing agency delivering on these fronts for your business?

According to Forbes, these are the trends disruptive marketers should be focusing on in 2018:

The growing importance of brand purpose

Research discussed by The Genius Works indicates that consumers want brands to be more purposeful, with 88% saying they believe companies are powerful enough to influence change and that they should be doing more to make a positive difference to the world.

Little wonder, then, that Forbes forecasts brand purpose will be a top trend in 2018. For marketing success next year, brand purpose needs to be placed at the core of the business and brand strategy, seamlessly integrating the two to create experiences that centre on “making tomorrow better than today”.

To see the greatest growth, The Drum argues that marketers need to focus on offering genuine purpose, in order to earn authenticity and reap truly loyal customer relationships.

Lead with your heart, not your head

Humans are emotional creatures and, while your consumer profiles might tell you a lot about your target audience, brands and marketers can often forget the fact that, behind the screen and the data, all consumers are still just humans.

There’s no better time to pull at the heartstrings than at Christmas. As Marketing Week explains, a survey of 2,000 consumers found that Marks & Spencer is among the leading brands when it comes to evoking an emotional response, with 20% emotionally responding to the retailer, making it the fourth highest after Macmillan, Green & Blacks, and the British Heart Foundation.

A study by the Harvard Business Review last year revealed that “the most effective way to maximise customer value is to move beyond mere customer satisfaction and connect with customers at an emotional level.”

Master the art of storytelling

With a focus on brand purpose and emotionally connecting with consumers, marketers should find storytelling a breeze.

By investing in its brand story, sending a clear message and invoking emotional responses, M&S also took the top spot when it came to the UK’s top storytelling retailer, having moved up 14 places in this year’s study.

And disruptive marketers should take note of this as they move into next year, as consumers no longer want to be sold to, but rather want to be part of a customer journey. In fact, an infographic discussed by Instapage revealed that 92% of consumers want brands to make content that feels more like a story.

With Forrester predicting consumer trust to hit an all-time low next year, marketers need to look at new ways of enhancing the customer experience if they want to see results in 2018.

At Fireworx, we’re committed to making people stop and take notice, focusing on creating campaigns that drive better, more emotional responses. Get in touch with us today if you’d like to work with a marketing agency that thinks disruptively, and challenges conventions.

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