After a tough 2012 for most and a challenging economic landscape since 2008 for many, predicting trends and certainties is becoming increasingly difficult. We are all often hit with surprises instead of expected market changes.

Understanding what NEW marketing models are stirring can help you keep up with this struggling, and still fast-paced world and resist relenting to the most common certainty of the past 2 years – to run discount campaigns that lay claim that you are cheaper.

Fortunately, we can be pretty confident during 2013 these things are also certain.

1. (Big) Data Will Be The Currency Of 2013. Consumer Data will be sold/shared between brands. Consumers will demand rewards and incentives to give up data too. The argument over who does data belong to will heighten with this of course as business partners share data for the common good! Both an obstacle & an opportunity to engage for brands.
2. Personalised Mobile Campaigns Will Be Bigger Than Ever! Pressure for Device Neutral Technology Solutions will be bigger than ever! TIP: build your site in HTML5 code to ensure your site responds on any device.
3. Geo-Marketing Will Be Huge. For retailers, make sure you add geo-location software in to your applications – not conventionally to identify when consumers with interests in your products are close. No, use this aswell as a guerrilla tactic to identify when your target & existing consumers are near to your competitors post codes, and then target them with promotions & timely incentives to entice them to you instead.
4. More Self-Service/Template E-Commerce Models(With Embedded Geo-Locate) Will Be Available. These will be built by commercial technology opportunists and the big boys and these will be available to buy for the many; reducing go-to-market planning from 6-18mths down to less than 3 months for some businesses.
5. Harder to Buy Loyalty. We have seen over the past 15 years the proliferation of the advantage point schemes. This is making it incredibly hard for brands to stay engaged with their audiences and it is still the case that it costs more to acquire new customers than keep existing ones. However, by the end of 2013, we should see this noticeably turn on its head. Marketers will be forced to find new cheaper methods of acquisition, so that you don’t have to fight with everyone else in the world now selling online. Remember – buying loyalty is only temporary and really a misnomer.
6. Loyalty Cards Will Decline. We have probably all have signed up to atleast 10 loyalty cards and rarely use them or aren’t quite sure which we are still signed up to or where the cards are. Well, with the birth of smart mobile devices becoming our ‘more petite’ digital wallets, we just need digital QR-tags & receipts to prove membership in stores and at online check outs now. NOTE: over 70% of the UK market uses a smart phone now! With this, we will instead be ‘subscribed for free’ to around 100, spending and redeeming less with each, and definitely not being loyal to anyone. The cost to brands maintaining a traditional reward card scheme is immense, whilst the schemes themselves are mostly free. This is why banking have jumped on the bandwagon, because they can offer ‘group buying subscriptions’ to a huge volume of  valuable targets who won’t be changing their account several times a year. This is a questionable benefit to account holders, but not an essential income generator to banks. Banks are just looking at ways of being part of every aspect of your life, rather than just being your money box, and it makes sense that the card itself can do more (while it is here of course! But, that is a blog for another day).
7. Proliferation of Cloud Competition. Everyone will be offering a cloud solution to every aspect of our lives. Indicatively, safe storage somewhere in the ether will allow us remote access to digital libraries of music, films, books and our own data backups. The tingling worry will be what if the clouds precipitates our data to others without our control. Loss of control is the main downside to this. Also Paid-For Subscriptions mean we don’t own our clouds permanently and if we can’t pay, we can’t access our own data property!
8. High Street Slow Down. This is inevitable, as with any technology burst, the high street can only try and survive. The secret to the high street’s sustainability will only come if it changes too. Moreover, offering something different and a reason to go in to it. Local, handmade, experience-driven retail outlets will be the best survivors. Hopefully, it won’t become a horrid place we all want to avoid in future.
9. Decay of Consumer Freedom & Personal (Face-to-Face) Interaction. With all of the above, decaying personal social skills will have a social impact and be the price of embracing these inevitables.
10. Insight Expenditure Will Be Bigger Than Ever. Commissioned omnibus (online panel research) and panel incentives will become more mainstream. Companies will spend more and more regularly on ‘silent research’ to test opinion and preferences on the whole marketing mix – products, proposition, price, distribution, advertising, etc. The masses will want to sign up to the likes of Toluna to be the interviewees, etc too to accrue reward points that allow them access to unique competitions and new products. Hopefully insights will be genuine and not skewed by the promise of a freebie.
11. Omnichannel Marketing Approaches Will Be Critical. Born in the retail sector, a customers behaviour path is tracked online, offline and at mobile touch points to build up accurate profiles and predict future behaviour and reactions to touches. The art is for any business to blend social and mobile data sources with a great offline brand experience, whether the product itself is purely on or offline.
12. More High Profile Crisis Management Affairs will occur. The speed with which the 3R’s are executed and the arousal of the next bigger faux pas to dampen the blaze will be the key to Public Relations Crisis Management success. Remember the 3Rs: REGRET, REVIEW, REMEDY. Alternatively, I’ve coined DAP (same thing): Declare, Announce, Propose.
13. Financial Services Authority Regulation Will Be Tougher & More Visible Than Ever. The FSA has hit most of the banks and financial services partners already with deep audits. 2013 will be shining the spotlight on the Insurance Market and other Paid-For Membership businesses to ensure that premiums are of real value and fair.
14. The Birth of B2E (Business to Employee). We already have Business to Business and Business to Consumer marketing rules of engagement, but how businesses do business with their own will become a special art to ensure they better become part of the brands bricks & mortar. In terms of staff retention and attraction this will be key.
15. Anglosphere Marketing Strategies Will Become More Common. The beauty of the UK, USA and Australia is that we share the native English tongue, which forgetting the vast distances across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for a moment, opens all territories up to volume audiences that are easier to communicate with. When our business is a service proposition or a digital product, then the export cost is relatively cheap. The main obstacles are technology and a few dialect/cultural differences. Food for thought though – don’t forget Australia (which the world does have a tendency to do, but less reason to now, more than ever).

Of course each industry sector has its own set of marketing inevitable’s to face, and Remote Marketing is on hand to discuss these with you, whatever your business – including hospitality, leisure, destination, specialist product, manufacturing or technical/professional services businesses.