The Marketer of 2020

The right skills and set up

As part of our survey of professionals in our network, we were keen to see how well consumer insights were feeding into business strategy.

We asked our respondents about what was getting in the way of getting to know their customer better, and what tools they thought would be most important for generating these insights in 2020.

More than 50% cited a lack of access to the right data as a blocker, while over a third said that there was a lack of understanding on helpful research in this area.

When we asked them what tools would be needed to best support the generation and distribution of consumer insights, we found that social, search, and survey analysis tools were popular (with 50% or more of the respondents selecting these). Data visualization, which can help spread insights across an organization, was also key.

There’s clearly room to improve when it comes to gathering and analyzing consumer data to make better decisions. Looking at some of the verbatim answers to our survey, we found several professionals talking about the skills marketers will need to improve on heading into 2020.

Alana Gordon, who works as Director Data Driven Content at Nordic Morning Sweden adds that there’s a need for hybrid skillsets, “where consumer insights can be creatively turned into profitable user experiences across the entire marketing ecosystem.”

But for others, it’s not so much about skills as it is about the tech set up itself.

Really, it comes down to the organization to work out what needs to be improved to ensure consumer insights are helping everyone make better decisions – both the right skills and the right set up will be needed to stand out in 2020.

The continued importance of agility

A word we saw pop up again and again in our data was ‘agile’.

While it’s been a buzzword for a long time, it’s good to see that people are continuing to articulate this as a priority heading into a new year. As the world moves faster, agility will be key to business survival – not just with marketing campaigns, but also with product development and broader decision making.

For Taryn Anderson at Hearst, agility is a core part of digital consumer intelligence.

It seems that agility and an ‘always on’ approach to consumer data are closely tied together. As Scott McKenna, CEO & Co-Founder at Our Social Collective Limited & Our Social Creative, says, “There is a continuous need to remain agile, while ensuring that we are learning and observing every day.”

This was echoed by Ross Puttock, Ecommerce Manager at Yorkshire Trading Co, who thinks that 2020 is going to be a real test of a business’s ability to react quickly to shifts in consumer behaviors.

Campaigns that resonate

The next theme that we found in our survey responses was creating campaigns, content, or communications that truly connected with consumer wants and needs.

Approaching this requires a solid approach from a data point of view – after all, campaigns should be based on more than guesswork. It also requires the agility we discussed above – consumer preferences change (and fast!)

For Nick Martin, Social Engagement Specialist at Hootsuite, 2020 will be all about developing a deeper understanding of consumers: “I’m challenged with diving deeper into our customer’s needs. We know what they want on a superficial level, now we want to use Brandwatch data to discover the nitty-gritty of who our customers are and what they want.”

This attitude can help marketers be more thoughtful about what they choose to show to their target audiences and segments.

Taryn Anderson, Marketing Manager at Hearst told us about one of their key challenges for 2020 – determining which audience segments to prioritize when tailoring consumer content. “We work with clients in a wide variety of verticals, so figuring out how to appeal to these different categories is priority number one,” they said.

Their concerns about segmenting audiences are echoed by Accenture Interactive’s Bel Castro:

Andy Schaul from Bayer nicely summarized how this approach to understanding consumers can go way beyond content and campaign planning in his definition of digital consumer intelligence.

Building relationships that matter, across the customer journey

Something we found a few of our professionals talking about was going beyond the sales funnel.

For example, Nicole Luistro talks about encouraging customer advocacy.

And Erik Peterson discusses creating content that doesn’t fit neatly with the traditional output of the marketing team.

This fits with a trend prediction from Engagio‘s Jon Miller, who recently wrote: “Most marketers are exclusively focused on generating new business, yet the rise of recurring revenue models and increased importance of expansion revenue mean the vast majority of revenue is generated after the initial sale. This is a fundamental mismatch that needs to be resolved…Marketing’s focus must shift away from just new business to thinking about all kinds of revenue; new business, expansion, even retention. Modern B2B marketers will focus on the entire account journey.”

It seems that the role of the marketing team is evolving once again. With these new responsibilities, connecting meaningfully with the wants and needs of prospects and customers will be vital for generating results in all these areas.