As we are moving toward the new normal, most business strategies are shifting to adjust and address the new challenges.

In 2020, customers’ expectations have changed drastically  —  everything needs to be digitalized and optimized for remote accessibility to survive the lockdown. New workplace trends have emerged and will remain for a long time along with the ways the companies market and position themselves.

Here we will explore the essentials that most marketers will probably face in the upcoming year.

Addressing the New Normal

While it could be a good idea to not focus too much on the negative consequences of the lockdown, it is important to show your customers that you care and do not remain in denial about the current situation. The studies have shown that 61% of people found “business as usual” emails annoying in these challenging times.

Adjust your communication accordingly and keep the pandemic topic in mind for your email marketing, social media and website content strategies. Ensure your audience that you are doing everything to address their needs.

This approach is also worth doing because people are looking for more information to cope with anxiety. A survey conducted by Adtaxi showed that 68% of people consider it helpful when ads showed regard for the current scenario.

Rise of Artificial Intelligence

The use of AI has risen by almost 30% since 2018 and continues to grow.

Chatbots continue to take over the first tier customer communication side and bring a great experience to both clients and support workers. It is predicted that about 80% of the companies will start or continue using them in 2020.

Another example is Salesforce Einstein, which is a set of platform services that bring advanced AI capabilities into the core of the Customer Success Platform. It includes Marketing Analytics Cloud, Sales, Service and Community Clouds powered by advanced machine learning. The advantage is that you are able to use AI on all your customer data, making the communication and relationship with your customers more personalized.

In fact personalization tools, such as product recommendations, dynamic content, and behavioral and geo-targeting, are getting more advanced and becoming more popular. However, the issue of user data privacy is emerging as well, especially in Europe with the GDPR regulations.

‍

Learning Opportunities

The demand for online courses has increased by 225% in March. And this trend continues to grow.

Offering learning opportunities to your audience  —  be it webinars about advance usage of your products, sharing professional insights or just discussing the current challenges together  —  can win you a lot of trust and loyalty among customers.

You can leverage many platforms for this – for example Salesforce’s myTrailhead enables companies to build their own customised training and onboarding trails. Salesforce Communities will allow you to have open discussions with your customers and partners.

Shifting Communication Strategies

While the general marketing trend has been shifting towards conversational marketing for a long time, in times of massive digitalization and remote communication, it is becoming especially essential.

Voice search and conversational AI are shifting the SEO practices towards the voice-oriented VSEO that soon may become the new standard.

Recent Salesforce report exploring marketing trends of this year has shown that 84% percent of customers consider the experience a company provides is equally important as its products and services which is up from 80% in 2018.

How can Salesforce help to address the new marketing trends?

Salesforce has a vast offering of different products for marketing such as Marketing Cloud for building personalized, interactive customer journeys and Pardot for B2B marketing automation and creating a high quality pipeline.

Marketing Cloud uses AI to discover new trends and predict best outcomes. In addition with Salesforce’s newest acquisition Vlocity, companies will be able to have even more personal level connections with their customers allowing them to focus more on their brand values.

What is your marketing strategy for the future and is your technology adapted to the coming changes?

‍