25 Business Trends For ROI in 2018 and Beyond
You can feel the tension in the air
It’s halftime, and your team is down by 14 points. In walks your coach, Al Pacino. As he begins to speak, you can tell he’s not happy.
“We are in hell right now, gentlemen.
We can stay here, or we can fight our way back into the light.
We can climb out of hell.
One inch at a time.
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second.
On this team, we fight for that inch.
On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch.
We CLAW with our fingernails for that inch.
Cause we know when we add up all those inches, that’s going to make the difference between winning and losing… between living and dying!”
You probably know this classic speech. If you’re in business, you know exactly what Pacino is talking about.
Business is a game of inches.
These 25 trends will help you dominate the rest of the year, and all of 2018. They’re brought to you by The Mission Studios — We create original content, shows, and series for brands, and distribute them to millions. To learn more, connect with us here.
1. Ads Must Become Chapters in A Never Ending Story
Many of us have seen an example of a storytelling ad or two. These narratives are trending towards uniqueness, downright weirdness, or small stories that are part of a larger never ending story.
The main appeal of these creative shorts is that they leave consumers wanting to know what happens next. The goal is the same: deliver value, and peak their interest for more.
Expect the ads you see on social to be the beginning of a story whose ending you can only discover by going to the retailer’s website. This emotionally-driven ad done by 84 Lumber during this year’s Super Bowl is a perfect example of a journey/story contained in an advertisement.
These ads won’t be as much about a product as they will be about creating the first part in an open loop narrative that the user seeks to close.
Image-based ads are great for product promotion, but video ads and creative shorts will use our human need for closure to boost our engagement with brands that understand how to use them well.
Furthermore, with more noise on social channels than ever, we’re going to see higher expectations from brands for their marketing and ad agency partners to produce novel and viral campaigns. Advertising partners won’t be able to take the same strategy that worked for retailer A and apply it to retailer B. Creativity and innovation will be the name of the game.
We’ve seen the success that unique storytelling can have with retailers like Dollar Shave Club and Squatty Potty, but the permission given to ad agencies to experiment and try wild ideas will skyrocket this year.
2. More Brands Will Create Original Media Series
Expect brands to hire agencies to create original media and stories (both fiction and nonfiction). They’ll do this across many mediums, including text, audio, video, podcasts, documentaries, VR, TV Series, and even full-length feature films.
We’re likely to see more content that helps solve a problem, teach a skill, or otherwise inspire a brand’s potential customers.
Ebay and Gimlet Creative have already entered this space with the podcast “Open For Business.”
The podcast discusses the triumphs and challenges of building a business from the ground up. This is a great start, but non-fiction stories are not as evergreen as fictional ones. The Message podcast, developed by General Electric and two creative agencies, epitomizes this marketing truth. This podcast highlights why fictional stories can generate enduring awareness for years.
When we create custom content for brands, we encourage them to explore the fictional route. Original, fictional series have the ability to stay relevant and produce results for years — even decades. This can’t be said for any other type of branded content.
3. Expect Research and Spending on M&A To Skyrocket (and Everyone Will Get Involved)
Spending on M&A will result in more acquisitions, especially small acqui-hires and micro-acquisitions.
We’ve seen companies like Pinterest make seemingly strange acquisitions in the past, like buying out the two-person startup Hike Labs in 2015, and the seven-person startup Kosei earlier that same year. However, both micro-acquisitions enabled Pinterest to build out their content discovery strategy, leading to better user engagement and experiences.
If companies can’t marginally increase each touch point of the product experience, starting with their online funnel, they won’t be able to move the company forward. Yet, many businesses are unlikely to have the budget or time to establish a high-functioning online funnel from scratch.
Because hiring and retention are so challenging, businesses are starting to see M&A deals as the only way to find, hire, and retain talented employees. For many, effective M&A can make the difference between continued growth and obsolescence.
4. Storefronts and Websites Must Become Personalized, Interactive Experiences
When you walked into a store 10 years ago, your goal was to purchase a product. When you walk into a store this year, the scope of your goal most likely includes the shopping experience as well the product. You want to consider buying that product in a way that helps you learn something new, laugh, or remark to others about the service you received. Whether it’s in the real world or online, your storefront must greet and meet each potential customer as the unique individual that they are. This means you have to push hard for personalization, and create interactive experiences where the customer can get involved. This proper balance of personalization and involvement minimizes what researchers call “cognitive overhead” and creates fond memories.
For example, Apple’s goal is to make you love its products and to give you the chance to speak with people that know its products. This is apparent when you walk into an Apple store, where you can touch and interact with all the products for sale.
Bass Pro Shops does the same thing, though on a slightly larger scale. The outdoor apparel and equipment retailer immerses you in the life of an outdoors(wo)man with huge fish tanks, taxidermied animals, and tour-bus-sized campers to make you feel like you are about to go on an adventure. Not only do these exhibits keep people in the store longer, they also attract new consumers altogether. Simple probability suggests that the more people come to your store, the more sales you’ll make.
These businesses get it. The brands that throw you into a world of a stale eCommerce site design, or into disorganized and dimly lit shelves are in serious danger of folding in the years to come.
5. Crazy Accurate Buyer Profiles Are Making Discovery and Shopping Fun
As better tools are created for consumer research and segmentation, retailers have the ability to develop more detailed and accurate buyer profiles.
Knowing who your customers are, what they care about, what their problems are and what kinds of solutions they want will enable brands to make more informed marketing decisions and, ultimately, increase sales.
In this same vein, retailers will begin investing more heavily into research and development. This will mean better surveys, more client behavior analysis, improved product design, and more integrated buyer lifecycle research. It won’t be unusual for brands to hire psychologists, economists, and other scientists to inform their product development and marketing strategies.
It’s no accident that Snap, Inc. recently filed one of the biggest tech IPOs since Facebook. By more than doubling its research and development budget — and its sales and marketing budget — Snap was able to better understand its user base and build a sensible revenue strategy for the future.
6. Brands Will Embrace Third-Party Platforms as Entry Points
While some businesses may have resisted selling their products on third-party platforms in the past, expect retailers to start offering their products on multiple third-party vendor sites this year.
By promoting their cheaper or most-popular products on platforms like Amazon, brands can attract new customers. These products will be both loss leaders and lead generators, with additional offers and higher-priced items remaining exclusive to the retailers’ main websites.
Once a user has purchased a product, the item’s packaging or confirmation email will contain a call to action to get an exclusive bundle, offer, or other discount if the next order comes directly from the retailer’s website or app.
7. Messaging Will Become The Norm in Mobile Shopping
How do you sell your products on mobile screens in less than one minute, with less than six inches of screen real estate? It’s really hard.
But with the many messaging apps and text services at our disposal, reaching your customers in a format they’re comfortable and familiar with is becoming increasingly easy. Combine this with the capabilities of chatbots and other kinds of artificial intelligence (AI), and there’s not just the ability to sell products via chat or text but to automate this process.
Mobile content delivery and shopping is already heading towards one-on-one micro messaging. Facebook made changes to their Messenger service, allowing users to interact with retailers’ chatbots to make a purchase without leaving Messenger, and Amazon has been experimenting with text message buying since 2008.
Don’t be surprised when analytics and reporting tools become available to assess the effectiveness of retailers’ chats and texts, much like we can currently analyze the success and engagement of emails.
8. One-Click Financing Options Are Here
Some retailers — especially those in the furniture, luxury, and custom retail markets — have found it difficult to sell online effectively.
After all, if your products cost upward of $500, it’s difficult to create a speedy checkout process while also validating customers’ credit information and guiding them through the financing process.
One-click financing integrations will not only expedite the checkout process, improving user experience and reducing cart abandonment rates, but they will also make fraud and chargebacks a thing of the past.
Solutions like Affirm, which offers 0% APR financing on everything from jewelry to concert tickets to your dream vacation, will continue to make financing easier and less intimidating for the average consumer.
Expect big ticket and luxury items to transition to an online sales orientation now that integrations like Affirm make it easy. Affirm’s recent partnership with mattress company Casper is a sign of this, and we can expect similar “Finance through Affirm” and “Affirm Buy” buttons to start showing up on retail sites.
We should further expect retailers to opt for the “full stack” in terms of offering their own branded form of financing in this model. While brands like Affirm have become a hallmark of one-click financing, we’re likely to see more and more retailers developing their own one-click finance options in an effort to keep payment plans internal.
For example, drone and technology company DJI has its own credit line, applicable only to the DJI Online Store.
9. Better ‘Check In’ Incentives to Spark Engagement
Foursquare SWARM is just the beginning.
While third-party platforms like Foursquare and Facebook have been giving users the option to “check in” at local businesses for years, 2017 is the year we’re likely to see commerce companies create better incentives for customers to use this feature.
The implementation of this strategy begins with improved copywriting on retailers’ websites and social channels. Clear and concise invitations to engage in a way that make the customer feel savvy will make engaging with brands fun. When it becomes fun to interact with a brand, social and digital engagement for that brand will go through the roof.
10. Expect Sales Countdowns To Pull In Real-Time Data
We’ve seen the success of order countdown tools on sites like Shopify and Ebay. This success is due in part to customers’ Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) on the sales and products they want.
Now retailers can apply this sales strategy to their own websites by tapping into real-time data. Accurately reporting the specifics of how many items are left and the estimated time to zero inventory instills great FOMO (as long as the data can be trusted, of course).
11. Browser Extensions Are Influencing Competitive Pricing
Browser-based extensions for product recommendations, cross-checking prices, and coupon aggregation are going to become even more popular this year.
Honey is our favorite example of a browser extension tool that delivers massive value while you shop online. When you’re ready to make a purchase anywhere on the web, simply click Honey, and it will automatically try to apply dozens of different discount codes to your order that it’s found from all around them web. As the company continues to grow, expect businesses to go directly to them with their discount and offer codes.
As Honey continues to prove their worth (and ease of use) to customers, it’s likely that we’ll see more competitive pricing across the eCommerce space.
12. Master the Front-End, Back-End, Go Full-Stack… or Risk Going Defunct
As the world becomes more digitally focused, wholesalers find themselves having less to offer the average consumer. Plus, thanks to their distribution centers, software, logistics, and ‘full stack’ approach, Amazon is entering the space.
The wholesalers who thrive will have to either swim upstream (become a retailer) or downstream (start making their own products) or go for the full stack approach and do everything.
When you add up these trends…
1. Investing in original media and stories (both fiction and nonfiction) will give you evergreen media assets and IP that will produce results for years
2. Make your ads a chapter in a never ending story (that your customers don’t want to see end!)
3. Keep an eye on M&A’s
4. Every website or store can become a personalized and interactive experience
5. Empathy will help you create (and delight) with accurate buyer profiles
6. Embrace third-party platforms as marketing assets, loss leaders, and entry points into your brand
7. Use messaging to turn shopping into a conversation
8. Consider integrating or using one-click financing options
9. Create better check-in incentives to spark engagement
10. Add real time and live updates to your contests and countdowns to make them remarkable
11. Browser based extensions will drive coupons and discounts
12. Master the front, back, or full stack approach… or risk going defunct
…you’ll get the difference between winning and losing.
I think Pacino would approve.
Chad Grills is the founder of The Mission, your #1 source for accelerated learning.
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13. Local Partnerships and Joint Ventures Will Drive Foot Traffic into Physical Stores
Expect to see a flurry of partnerships and joint ventures between companies with pop-up stores, or smaller physical stores and “guideshops” (a model pioneered by Bonobos). For instance, you might get a free Starbucks coffee or tea when you stop by a Bonobos guideshop to try on a suit. Or expect to see savvy brands with a physical presence like Bonobos host pop-up stores from aligned brands and complimentary products like AllBirds.
14. Customer-Generated Content is Vital
Consumers trust user-generated content (UGC) more than any other type of media, so it stands to reason that retailers will figure out how to harness this for better brand experiences.
Businesses will work with their clients and customers to incentivize user and customer-generated content. Storytelling will likely play a big role in this kind of content as brands seek out ways to make customers’ experiences heard.
UGC will start slowly, but will build as businesses learn how to properly incentivize customers for their participation.
Whether it’s user generated content, testimonials, recommendations, or advertisements . . . expect to see way more collaboration between users and businesses. Here is a simple and solid example from Starbucks: start with our white cup, decorate it, and send us the picture!
15. Tastemakers and Influencers Are Becoming Even More Powerful (aka… The Tim Ferriss and Oprah effects are just getting started)
To better filter through the noise online, customers will continue beating a path to the door of brands and people they trust for product recommendations. You’ve probably heard of the Oprah or Tim Ferriss effect, and these are both real phenomena. When either of these two talk about something, it drives awareness and trials. Expect companies to become trusted curators by developing their own “(Company Name here) effect.”
We see the market rewarding this, as the rates for product placement and podcast advertising are going through the roof.
16. Media Must Mediate a Better Life for the Viewer
Businesses and marketers must continue learn how to bring their audiences positive feelings and transformative messages.
People are sick of the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt currently pushed by most digital information sources and news.
Media will need to spark nostalgia and faith by telling stories of a definitely better future. The platforms best suited for this are Medium, YouTube, Instagram/ Facebook, and any other platform where the, “little moments” in life can be displayed via picture or video.
In 2017 and beyond, media that is magnetic will be the kind that mediates: faith, hope, learning, and gratitude.
17. Loyalty Programs Will Become Hyper-Personalized
Loyalty campaigns will be a key strategy throughout 2017 and beyond. Expect to see the most savvy retailers gathering boatloads of consumer information as customers shop, using this data to offer personalized loyalty incentives during the shopping journey, and personalized offers to re-engage or strike up a conversation about buying in the future.
We’ve seen the example of Target using data to try and determine which customers were pregnant and personalizing their offers accordingly. The companies that figure out how to do this in a non-creepy (and more precise) way will win… big time.
Credit card companies have the best chance of creating ultimate loyalty, to the point where every loyalty program can be tied to your credit card number and the card company’s own loyalty system. Expect credit card companies’ loyalty programs to become more consumer and brand friendly.
18. Risk Reversals, Returns, and Guarantees Will Become More Sophisticated
Easy, free, automated product returns are becoming the standard. Gone are the days of needing to call the retailer or send an email to complete a return.
Why then, is a simple return process a good strategy? Because the improved customer experience and remark-ability of easy returns boost the lifetime value of most customers.
Examples are everywhere:
- Mattress companies are offering a free 100 night trial, with free returns if you’re unhappy
- Companies like AddShoppers guarantee a 10X ROI over the cost of their eCommerce software (Full disclosure- they are a client of The Mission, and we’ll likely be using their software after launching our storefront)
- Nordstrom is known to take back any item at any time (sometimes even without a receipt!)
Risk reversals and guaranteeing results is tough, but businesses have to find a way to offer them in order to thrive in 2017 and beyond.
19. Owned and Operated Crowdfunding Will be Used to Test New Product Ideas
Crowdfunding campaigns on third party platforms have been used to fund new projects for retailers, creatives, and other professionals who didn’t otherwise have the financing to develop their products.
This year, more businesses will begin to test crowdfunding on their own platforms. Miir is a great example of company that does their own crowdfunding to test for demand before investing in creating a product.
20. Brands’ Social Impact Will Be Quantified and Advertised
Companies will stop talking about their community projects and social impact, and begin using data to show the real results their employees or products are having on others. Patagonia is a great example.
This will be the secret sauce for companies that want to attract millennials and other employees who want to feel good about working for a specific business.
21. Made in the U.S.A. Will Speed Up the Velocity of Money
Though we can’t say the U.S. economy has completely recovered from the 2008 recession, the overall economy has bounced back. However, there’s still a need for businesses to create more jobs and products in-country.
The term velocity of money (also called M2 velocity) describes how quickly money is exchanged from one transaction to another. It’s usually measured as a ratio of gross national product (GNP) to the total amount of money a country has. When the velocity
Since 2007 and the financial crisis of 2008, the United State’s velocity of money has dropped dramatically. In Q1 of 2016, M2 velocity was only 1.46x, compared to 2.21x in 1997.
In an effort to maintain and improve the economy, as well as appeal to audiences who value brands that manufacture products in the States, more businesses are prioritizing on-shore manufacturing. This has the potential to supercharge the velocity of money in the U.S.
22. More IP Licensing Partnerships are Going to Form
Also known as, “your favorite childhood characters are going to come back — and ask you to buy things.”
If the instant and long term popularity of Pokemon Go has taught us nothing else, it’s shown us that people love products and experiences that elicit nostalgia.
Now that companies have seen first-hand just how much business nostalgia can drive, we’re likely to see more partnerships in the same style as Pokemon GO. The popular app was a four-way partnership between Niantic, Nintendo, Apple, and Google, with Niantic making nearly $1 billlion from the app in 2016.
We’ve seen partnerships like this in the past, though not quite on this scale, or spread across this many companies. Health and fitness apparel company Onnit partnered with Marvel in 2016 to create everything from Captain America t-shirts to Iron Man kettlebells.
While these two examples are vastly different in many ways, they have one theme in common: they both take popular characters from consumers’ childhoods and offer a fresh take on them for adults. The potential to monetize characters has always been there, but the success of Pokemon GO is going to push brands to action. Now that we’ve seen the power of collaboration in action, more brands are likely to take a similar approach to business development and marketing in the year ahead.
23. Data Science and User Experience Design Will Be the Most Important Skills for Companies to Master
Until recently, web analysts could rely on one of the many analytics tools available to simply look at a website’s performance and report data to company leaders. But simply regurgitating analytics data around user behavior won’t be good enough anymore.
Everyone has access to data in 2017. Companies now have to figure out how to avoid drowning in it. The businesses that can build in-house web analytics and data science teams are likely to fare better than companies that outsource analytics work to other agencies or, worse, improperly interpret data and UX indicators in-house.
More importantly, businesses that allow their data science and design teams to run radical experiments and try new things will eventually strike gold.
24. Preeminent Companies and Brands Will Become Arbiters For Societal Issues and Debates
Becoming the social arbiter for important issues and topics is the ultimate way to generate consumer engagement with your brand. Amazon tested this strategy with some simple copy that appears when you mouseover a Kindle on their website:
By simply stating, “It’s not screen time. It’s book time,” Amazon is able to address an issue many consumers — -parents especially — -care about: “screen time.”
We all want to use our screens in more productive ways or simply use them less. Many of us have goals to reduce our time spent with our smartphones and increase the number of books we read.
This is a great example of Amazon owning the screen time debate, and saying in a polite way, ‘This isn’t another screen for distractions, it’s a screen to help you read more.’
The risk of offending some consumers far outweighs the upside of making a good point in a clear way that delivers value and nudges customers toward a purchase they can feel good about.
Like Amazon, there are plenty of other companies that are wise about the social debate going on in their industry. They know the debates and arguments that people are making where there product is (or could be) involved.
There’s a good chance there’s a debate going on about your product, too. Consumers are likely familiar with it. You just need to figure out how to insert your brand as an arbiter of this social dialogue and discussion.
How can you help guide that debate? Brands that have good points to make about social issues related to their products should not be afraid of owning such discussions. Obsolescence is waiting for brands with no interesting opinions.
25. Businesses Will Build or Buy Personalization and Optimization Software For Their Data
The race to make sense of data in order to hyper personalize the buying experience is accelerating. Building technology like this means brands need to invest. Either build the right solution, buy it, or be left behind.
There you have it, 25 business trends to help you and your company dominate 2018. If this article was helpful, please share it with a friend or colleague!
