2020 Global Marketing Trends

Digital transformation and the increase in reliance in digital usage can create a need for increased human connection between brands and their customers, workforce, and partners. We conducted over 80 interviews with subject matter experts to identify seven distinct global marketing trends for 2020 including: Agility, Participation, Talent, Purpose, Human experience, Trust and Fusion.

Agility
The use of agile, cross-functional teams can empower rapid content production to help react, predict and direct conversations, ultimately driving engagement. Interaction with customers in near real-time can enhance customer experience and decision-making.

Participation
Brands are creating deeper engagement with customers by allowing them to participate in customizing, collaborating, co-creating, marketing and shaping the overall brand. Increased customer interaction builds competitive advantage and develops a stronger relationship with the brand.

Talent
An organization’s talent is its most important asset. All individuals within an organization should be aligned with its purpose, and marketers should embrace the challenge of creating deeper, more meaningful engagement for their workforce. Greater engagement in the workforce inspires and creates deeper connections to the meaning of their work, ultimately benefiting the customer and workforce alike.

Purpose
Purpose-driven companies witness higher market share gains and grow three times faster on average than their competitors, all while achieving higher workforce and customer satisfaction. A relationship with purpose can result in increased loyalty from customers, workforce, and partners when authentic purpose connects with stakeholder values.

Human experience
Digital technologies have increased the ease in which we navigate our busy lives, but can erode the fundamental elements of human connection. By developing a true human experience for customers, brands can address the unmet need for connection by aligning customers, the workforce and partners to a common purpose.

Trust
In the era of connected technology and big data analytics, organizations can systematically build brand and customer trust by being transparent, guarding against external cyber threats, and avoiding unethical or invasive data misuse.

Fusion
Traditional boundaries between industries are disappearing, signaling an era of fusion between once disparate industries. Marketers are redirecting valuable assets by pivoting outside conventional constructs and expanding to serve more customers across ecosystems.