January is always a great month to assess business goals and trends. Forbes recently reached out to me and other entrepreneurs, asking for some insight on customer behavior trends. What are the big trends we can anticipate this year?
You can read here. If you’re short on time, here are some of the bigger trends I think we will continue to see with consumers, staring with the advice I offered Forbes.
Growing Importance Of Content Marketing
“As conferences and trade shows put their events on hold in 2021, more businesses will search for alternative ways to sell their products and services. Content marketing is going to play a larger role in this transition and I’m not talking about ads. Businesses will turn to the media to try to introduce their products to consumers and enterprise. The successful ones will find ways to sell online.” – Mark Macias, MACIAS PR
Companies will continue to stand out from the COVID noise in 2021. For several years, COVID has created a vacuum for many brands, since it was harder to stand out when everyone was bunkered down.
It difficult for many companies to get their message out during COVID. The media had a tight narrative during the pandemic, and it wasn’t looking for alternatives. If you didn’t find a way to fit your story into the cycle, your brand didn’t get covered.
Content marketing is already playing a larger role with PR. Getting a news story placed is difficult for even the best PR firms. However, content marketing gives many of these PR agencies an opportunity to build a more consistent brand.
More Socially Conscious Shopping
Higher degrees of socially conscious shopping is a behavioral trend to watch for in 2021. Love it or hate it, cancel culture as a phenomenon is not new to the world of commerce. However, with tensions high, customers will heavily consider the political, social and ethical ramifications of supporting businesses or brands that are not aligned with their philosophies and beliefs. – Jay Johnson, Coeus Creative Group
I thought Jay did a great job of communicating the cancel culture we are seeing with Gen Z. Just today, we had a long conversation with our team about the cancel culture movement. If your brand doesn’t support the political or ethical views of your customer base, you might be in trouble in 2021.
Former President Trump made it much easier for brands to see this cancel culture unfold, but as the political microphones become more muted, brands will have to listen even closer to what their customers say.
ABOUT MACIAS PR
Marketing peers named MACIAS PR the 2017-2020 Strategic PR Firm of the Year. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, Finance Monthly named MACIAS PR the Financial PR Firm of the Year. The founder – Mark Macias – is a former Executive Producer with NBC and Senior Producer with CBS in New York. City & State Magazine named him a PR Political Power Player in 2021.