According to the latest crystal-ball gazing, big trends in marketing for the year ahead range from the increasing impact of AI to the Gen Z preference for ‘social as search’.
But before everyone jumps headlong into the hype cycle, it’s always good to pause and work out how any trend might benefit an organisation and its members. For example, at CPL One we always seek to discover how the work we do can achieve the following:
- Connect members with a professional organisation, and their profession as a whole
- Develop members’ professional knowledge, skills and confidence
- Represent member needs and experience
- Celebrate professional excellence.
When our work delivers against these ‘pillars’, we help to support an organisation’s future.
We are also discovering three trends that go beyond the latest advances in tech or demographic insight, and which have particular relevance for our clients and their audiences’ needs:
- Community
- Authenticity
- Value.
Together, these work to bring people together around a brand or organisation, in a place they feel they belong. Let’s look at them.
Community
Communities help us to make sense of our world. From local business meet-ups and YouTube tutorials, to the way we organise our conversations on WhatsApp and TikTok – group activity, shared learning, support and fun are increasingly the ways we make sense of our world and the basis for community-building.
Fostering and engaging communities can help your business understand customer needs and pain points, leverage brand awareness, boost acquisition and loyalty, and turn customers into brand advocates. Communities, therefore, are an active and responsive mechanism that provides insight and direction for your business.
Finding fresh and relevant ways to support your customer communities should be a priority for supporting your business’s future.
Authenticity
Authenticity powers togetherness and belonging. A strong community can be a place where people feel they belong together and have a future together, but that doesn’t always mean they share the same backgrounds, experiences, ambitions or abilities. It might seem counter-intuitive, but individuality is vital for the togetherness of any community.
This is where authenticity comes in. Authenticity is about having the opportunity to be true to ourselves. It’s about supporting our individuality and helping others, so we can all become the people we want to be.
People join communities when they feel that within that community they can live more authentically. And they leave when they can’t.
When a business communicates and supports individuals within its customer or member communities in a more personalised, meaningful way, and its offering meets the needs of the individual as well as the group, then it empowers that individual’s sense of authenticity. In turn, that can increase loyalty and engagement. As a consequence, the whole community is strengthened – and so is the value of your product or service.
Value
Value is the real benefit gained from a product or service in relation to the price paid.
In other words, ‘value’ doesn’t directly correlate with ‘cost’ – and offering value for your customer isn’t done through price alone.
It also means that valuedelivery doesn’t end with a conversion at the point of sale or sign-up – it’s an ongoing challenge that must be constantly supported, meeting customer needs throughout your relationship with them.
Value drivers include:
- Understanding changing needs and desires
- Helping people discover useful solutions and apply them to the challenges they face
- Offering your support and guidance, representing members’ interests and helping them gain support from peers
- Creating platforms and places for engagement and celebration, to encourage a sense of togetherness and belonging
- Helping people build confidence in how they use your products/services, and to become advocates in what they do.
At CPL One, we help clients strengthen their value proposition so their customers come together around their products and services in meaningful and authentic ways.
When we do that, we help people belong. And that’s not a trend, it’s a principle we can use for future-proofing our businesses.
If you would like to discuss how CPL One can help you, please get in touch with Lucy Oakshott, lucy.oakshott@cplone.co.uk.
