This is the third year of our four-day work week experiment, and we have an update. 

Last year, we increased our four-day weeks to every other Friday, in addition to taking the entirety of summer as a four-day work week. This year, we’ve carried on the experiment, with a little bit of help from our friends (Asana, Google Meet, and Strava). 

This is how it’s going so far. 

The Prelude: Why Four Days?

It’s estimated that the amount of time spent on deep-focused work averages just over 4 hours and 48 minutes per day. When including collaborative work and multi-tasking opportunities into the overall calculations, the average employee is actively engaging with their work for a total of just under 7 hours – an hour less than the span of a typical work day. 

Additionally, not all work is made equally: 1 in 20 professionals spends more than twenty hours in meetings, and 60% of other valuable time is spent on ‘work about work’, such as chasing for updates. 

The quantity of work has significantly increased in the last handful of years, and the immediacy of email and work chats have pivoted towards an unsustainable working environment that ultimately can lead to burnout, low engagement, and dissatisfaction, thus stagnating company development. Above all, the four day work week is also a testimony to the belief that the mindset that prioritises astronomical growth at the cost of work-life balance is becoming increasingly unsustainable, both for business and the planet that we live in. 

Remote work is not a cure-all for bad company culture, but coupled with employee-led initiatives and continuous amendments, we feel that the four-day work week is the way of the future working world – and we’re just getting started. 

The Four Day Work Week, Year 3

Throughout the year, every alternative Friday is off; in summer, every Friday from June to October is off. Leave allowances and wages are untouched. In addition to Fridays off, while official working hours span between 9 – 5PM, employees can choose their own schedules and go out during the day to run errands, go to the gym, or work from different locations. Throughout the year, client meetings are scheduled from Monday to Thursday; the first year, Friday meeting requests were still very common, and they are down significantly this current year. 

In addition to our four-day work-week experiment, we are also a fully remote company with team members working from around the world. This decision was taken post-COVID-19, when there was no significant decrease in productivity, which introduces a new paradigm to the four-day work week. Most of us have no commute, adding several valuable hours to our free time, with the caveat that there is also less structured time: lunch is a moveable opportunity, and while there is liberty in scheduling work, there is equally less liberty in sticking to allotted end-times or start-times for the work day. While this has not proven a detriment in our own case, companies that experience crunch or have more stringent work demands can find a fully-remote and four-day work week a difficult combination to adopt. 

The benefits of a fully-remote, four-day work week

The ultimate aim of Switch’s working practices has always been to reduce the amount of time spent at work, and to complete more meaningful, high-quality, and valuable work for our clients. The three-day weekend falls in line with this plan, and additionally adheres to a changing understanding on work overall. Of the clients we’ve spoken to, most were understanding of the decision to remove communication on a Friday (and some have asked if we have any vacancies!). 

Some of the benefits reported are:

• A greater feeling of restfulness on Mondays. The three-day weekend adds another day to finish off errands, meaning that the weekend is fully and totally left for enjoyable activities. 
• Better work-life balance, and the ability to ‘reset’. 
• Working days showed higher productivity and focus. 
• Employee retention and recruitment prospects have increased. 
• A general sense of pride. 

Most notably, these benefits are in line with reports undertaken by much larger companies. 

• Microsoft’s three-day weekends boosted productivity by 40%. 
• 39% of employees in the UK experienced reduced stress levels due to the four-day week. 
• Half of respondents in a pilot study in the UK noted improvements in productivity; the remaining only noted that productivity stayed the same. 
• 56% of recruiters saw increased employee retention. 

The challenges of a four-day work week

A four-day work week is not without its drawbacks, and while the benefits can be clearly seen, there’s less focus on the negatives of having less time to work. Specifically for Switch, the challenges we most ran into were: 

• A greater difficulty in scheduling meetings, coinciding with the peak summer holiday months where parts of the team were unavailable. 
• Completing more detailed and elaborate tasks in a shorter week and with less time. 
• Coordinating with clients who work five days a week. 

That said, it is significant that the challenges faced this year are far less than the ones experienced in our previous four-day work week experiment, and can possibly be rectified with restructuring further. Two years into the four-day work week experiment, many of the initial issues have been smoothed out – but not without a certain level of effort. 

What does it take to make a four-day work week work?

For companies who are starting the four-day workweek themselves, this is a factor that is hardly spoken of: the effort, time, and practice it takes to perfect the way a four-day work week works within your organisation. 

And while we can only supply the information that we have learned over three consecutive years of experimenting with Fridays off, whether in sequence or alternative. 

The key factor to success is this: the leadership and management teams have undertaken the greatest task of streamlining Switch’s existing processes to remove opportunities for lag and delay. The biggest success of the four-day work week is down to this, and to realising that the company needed a set of values and principles to adhere to in order to make sure that we could take on the same level of work without the hitch of miscommunication. 

This has not been easy. 

But as a practice, it has been worthwhile, even outside of the four-day work-week experience. Streamlined processes and clearly communicated values mean that the potential for issues arising during work is much reduced, and as our clients continue to come to us from all corners of the world, and all around the clock, it has proven to be the most valuable asset for achieving high quality and repeatable results with a full eight hours of work removed from the week.

The four day work week: a global perspective 

What the four day work week has taught us about the way we view work is equally valuable – and about the flawed understanding that working hard means working from the first crack of dawn to overtime, every day. As the studies above show, longer hours at work does not equal higher productivity or more complete working days, and the four-day work week at Switch is concurrent with those findings. 

Additionally, what it has proven is that the pace of work has continued to accelerate, and that people are having trouble keeping up – but what that means is not trialling longer working weeks or shifting wholesale to AI to continue meeting and exceeding growth expectations that are developed slightly out of focus with the current reality.

What it does mean, and what Switch has decided to adhere to, is that we could all use sustainable growth measures over the idea of growth at all costs. Companies and company profits have reached record highs repeatedly, which has resulted in businesses staying open, unsociable hours increasing, and worker burnout on the rise. A step towards a more equitable way of working has proven great for us – and we believe it is the way forward for businesses. 

The four-day work week may not work for you. But neither will the idea that you should spend most of your waking hours at work.

We don’t have all the answers. What we do have is proof that working longer hours is outdated, at least for us. Shorter working weeks has led to happier employees, healthier life balances, and a better environment within the workplace when we’re together. 

If that isn’t the way forward for the future, it’s unclear what should be. 

The post The 4 Day Work Week Initiative, Year 3 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you’re in marketing, it’s what you know about marketing to businesses that sell to businesses. 

And that’s information that changes quickly, changes dramatically, and changes without warning. It’s information that moves on social media and through networks.

That’s just the nature of B2B, of marketing in general, and of what happens when businesses grow the way they do. It’s exciting. It’s difficult to keep up with. It’s hard to know what you don’t know. 

Fortunately, to learn what you don’t know there’s always courses. 

And here are 12 of the best to get you started (and no: we’re not affiliated with these. We’re just a fan).

Are B2B Marketing courses still important in 2024?

Definitely. 

Even if you’re prepared to put your money where your business is and attend every networking event, there’s going to be information you miss out on, or lessons learned that change as soon as you get the hang of it. A B2B marketing course fills in the gaps you don’t know of, letting you bridge the information barrier between what you understand and what you don’t. 

Who are B2B marketing courses even for?

Everyone who wants to learn a little more about B2B. 

Will they make you an expert in B2B communications? Sure, if you take enough of them – but if you don’t want to take too many courses, at least they can teach you what the best-in-class looks like across the industry.  

I don’t have time to take courses, I just want better B2B for my business. 

That’s fair. And to that, we say this: 

B2B marketing is an industry that relies on personal connection. Our advice to you if you don’t want to do your own B2B – find a business you can have a conversation with, a business who’ll tell you the way it is, and a business who’ll push back against your ideas if they don’t agree that they’re the most effective. 

You want better B2B. That means talking to people who understand your business, and want the best for you.

General B2B Marketing courses 

1. LinkedIn B2B Marketing

Bite-sized lessons on everything from writing a B2B marketing plan to working out a pricing strategy, in LinkedIn’s clean-cut video format. Courses are led by experts in their field and can be accessed from anywhere, and on pretty much any device. If you’re already familiar with LinkedIn, this would be our bet to start off with. 

2. Account-Based Marketing 2022 

Udemy has a lot of B2B marketing courses, but this one is one of the best-reviewed and the most comprehensive. If you’re looking to refine your account-based marketing strategy and to learn how to apply it to real-life cases, this course can teach you the basics and the steps to take to keep building on what you’ve learned. Buying the course grants you lifetime access, and if you’re not sold on the content, you can get your money back in 30 days with no hassle.

3. International B2B Marketing

If you’re looking to take your business operations international, this course can definitely help put you on the right path to cross-country marketing. Taught by Dae Ryun Chang, a professor of Marketing at Yonsei University in Korea, it’s one of the highest-rated courses on Coursera for good reason: the information you can get from it is invaluable. It’s 100% online, and you can take your time to complete it, so if you’re worried about not having enough time to finish up your course: don’t be.

Inbound B2B Marketing courses

4. Inbound Marketing Certification

Hubspot is an unmatched resource for any marketer: not only do they have a finger on the pulse of what’s happening in marketing, they also provide some very valuable resources from all over the internet, all for marketers of varying experiences. Their Hubspot Academy has dozens of courses, certified and not, that are taught by experts in their field and can be taken over the course of a few lunchbreaks – and it’s free. 

5. ImpactPlus Inbound Marketing Course

Run by inbound marketing experts Impact, what makes these courses unique is how easy it is to pick and choose which units you want to focus on: while they’re available as a complete learning experience, it’s up to you to decide if you want to undertake each and every lesson. There’s a lot of information packed into them, so you won’t be learning strictly inbound marketing, but that works out for the better: everything in marketing is interconnected, and the sooner you learn to see where they link, the easier it is to make connections that help your business grow. 

Google Analytics B2B Marketing courses

6. Google Analytics Academy

The best way to learn about Google Analytics is from the experts: Google themselves. Their Analytics Academy course walks you through everything from the first steps to take to start measuring your results to how to use Google Tag Manager and Data Studio. At the moment, the courses they have available are still based on Universal Analytics, which will stop processing data on July 1, but there is an outbound link that can take you to their free courses on Google Analytics 4, the successor to Universal Analytics. 

If you’re not sure why you need to know about Google Analytics, we’ve written a little about it here. 

There are other Google Analytics courses: at Udemy, Coursera, and LinkedIn, all of which are great if you prefer to go outside of the Googlesphere. However, for the most detailed understanding of Google Analytics, it’s hard to triumph over the company that created it. 

Social Media B2B Marketing courses

Caveat: social media marketing for B2B can tend to be a lot more trial and error than the previous categories we’ve spoken about. If you know your audience, you know what your audience wants to see, and you know how to talk to them, chances are that these courses can only really help you with understanding how to best leverage the platform you’re using. This doesn’t mean that you’re wasting your time; far from it. Understanding the platform can go a long way to making sure your message gets through. 

7. LinkedIn Marketing, Lead Generation & B2B Sales for LinkedIn

This is one of the most subscribed courses at Udemy, and with good reason: LinkedIn is a booming platform for B2B marketing, and can really help you connect with your audience, if your audience is primarily on LinkedIn. For B2B marketing agencies specifically: your audience is on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is also an underrated platform, especially for B2B, which gives you a little bit of an advantage when it comes to connecting with the kind of people who can bring in new business for your company. 

8. Grow and Convert’s Content Marketing Course

Social media is content. Good content on social media travels. Content that travels brings business back to you. 

The trick, then, is to make sure that all your content is good content – and to do that, you need to know what to talk about. Grow and Convert’s marketing course walks you through it all: from topics to choose to how to write your content in a way that reads well and ranks even better, and how to plan out your content to make sure that you’re never caught without something to talk about. 

9. Ahref’s Blogging for Business

A blog can do a lot for you – but it’s true that you can have a hard road ahead of you to get that blog off the ground. Ahrefs has a free course that can simplify the road for you. 

In 40 lessons, Ahrefs goes through the fundamentals of a blog, the way you can grow your blog, and how to then maintain and boost that growth. It’s one of the best resources online for blogging that demystifies and debunks old blogging practices that no longer work, such as keyword stuffing and writing blogs intended for machines instead of human readers, and it’s a course anyone struggling with their content should keep on the backburner for when they have the time to take it. 

SEO B2B Marketing courses

10. SEO for beginners

Even if you’re not a beginner, you can benefit from refreshing your memory with Yoast’s SEO course. SEO can be confusing, and it definitely impacts a lot of the way we form content today, so understanding it is a must for any business regardless of whether they’re B2B or B2C. Yoast’s free course goes through the technicalities of SEO with a fine-toothed comb and explains the concepts using easy to understand language and ideas – and they build on it in follow up courses that delve deeper into how to apply SEO for different purposes. 

Additionally, the Yoast SEO academy, of which this course forms a part, also has a practical element and templates that are free to use for all students. 

11. On-Page and Technical SEO Course

Semrush is a world-class authority on SEO, and any SEO course in their academy is worth taking – however, if you’re specifically interested in how to boost your website and optimise your business online, their on-page and technical SEO course will teach you everything you need to know. It’s free to enroll, and relatively ‘short’, so it does need a basic understanding of SEO, but if you’re a content creator or an SEO specialist, this course can definitely go a long way towards helping you refine your SEO skills. 

And you can even get certified by Semrush. 

12. SEO Training Masterclass: Beginner SEO to Advanced SEO

With over 70,000 students enrolled, this SEO training course consistently rates as one of the best SEO resources available on the internet – and while it is a paid course, it covers a lot of information all in one place. From WordPress SEO to link building SEO, if you’re truly a beginner and you want to get better faster, and learn how to take your SEO to the next level, this is the course we’d recommend. It evolves with the best-practice SEO methods, so even if you might have finished it already, we recommend keeping an eye on future updates. 

Are B2B marketing courses worth it?

Absolutely. 

B2B marketing courses aren’t going to make you a good B2B marketer – that’s going to be up to you. What these courses do provide is knowledge, and lots of it: knowledge about how to generate leads, knowledge about which social media platforms to pay attention to, knowledge about content, knowledge about SEO, knowledge about growth. What you choose to do with the information afterwards will determine if it’s worth it for you. 

We think they are. 

B2B marketing is a dense field, and it keeps growing. Having a little help along the way to understand the trickier parts of an industry that keeps changing faster than most can keep up with is an excellent way to make sure you’re not left behind, and that you know what’s going on. Information, especially in B2B, is powerful – and it can make a business. 

That said, you don’t need to take the courses if you don’t have the time or you don’t want to. 
If all you’re looking for is a B2B marketing agency to do the hard parts for you, that works too.

The post The 12 Best B2B Marketing Courses appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

In 2023, the big shakeup of generative AI, a growing dissatisfaction amongst consumers, and ongoing crises around the world have led to trends that we’ve already seen before, but given them newer, sharper importance.

2024 could be a year of diving profits, increasing dissatisfaction, and an impossible-to-overcome disconnect. Instead, the trends we’ve seen coming for this year leave a lot of room for hope: brands are still going strong, consumers still look to business as their guide into a more sustainable and supportive future, and small changes in the way we work have led to gigantic leaps for the better.

We’ve looked at BI. We’ve looked at consumer macro trends. We’ve looked at social media, marketing, brand and storytelling trends.

Now we’re handing it over to you. Everything we’ve researched, everything we’ve put together, everything you need to make sense of 2024 and start strengthening your business for the now, and the beyond-now.

May it serve you well!

P.S. Want more of this kind of content? Sign up to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn!

The post The Big Book of Trends 2024 [Free eBook] appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Get a designed PDF copy of Business Intelligence Trends 2024

If you don’t have the time to read this article now, you can download the PDF version of Business Intelligence Trends 2024 for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading.

Wait, why are we talking about Business Intelligence tech?

If you’ve been following our trend reports for the last few years, you’ll notice that we’ve never broached the subject of Business Intelligence. 

Because we’re not a tech or software company. 

Our speciality is the translation of technical expertise and experience into clear communication. So far, our trend reports have translated our own knowledge and foresight, but we understand that businesses need more than just guidance on brand and communication to excel. 

To extend the usefulness of these trend documents, we’ve collaborated with our tech partners at Cleverbit Software to deliver this report on a tool that can be the difference between surviving and flourishing for businesses of all sizes: BI. If you’re new to the field, we recommend taking a look at Cleverbit’s own content on the subject. They literally wrote the book on Business Intelligence.

But if you’re aware of the essentials, and are looking at what the next year has in store, keep reading.

Business Intelligence in 2024: Data Quality, Governance, and AI-Driven Trends

As we journey through 2024, the landscape of Business Intelligence (BI) is undergoing a transformation that is both profound and multi-dimensional. This transformation is not just about the adoption of advanced technologies; it’s an evolution in the very ethos of how businesses interact with data.

Businesses who have already invested in business intelligence software will have an edge above their other competitors, having been grandfathered into the functions of business intelligence before this point, however despite the significant expansion within the BI industry, 2024 makes it far more accessible to companies who haven’t yet taken the plunge – and a far greater need. Significantly more than in previous years, business intelligence software is no longer something that can be put aside because of the expense: the staggering quantity of data that is heading to business in 2024 is impossible to parse using humans. 

Main BI Predictions for 2024

1. Explainable AI to reinvigorate the way businesses consume and manage data. 
2. Natural language processing will increase the amount of data sets available. 
3. Collaborative BI technologies will be on the rise, leading to a greater proportion of cloud-based BI systems. 
4. Renewed importance for data quality and data governance.
5. The unavoidable implementation of democratic data.

Trend 1: AI will reinvigorate the way businesses consume and manage data

AI has already made an indelible mark on the business intelligence industry, however in 2024 this is going to go a step further. As organisations gear up to adapt to an exponentially larger amount of data, AI is going to provide the much-needed clarity and understanding that organisations need. Explainable AI is easy to understand –  flexible in how it is used and applicable to various use cases, allowing for any member of the organisation to understand the insights that the AI model provides and also how it came to those results. 

The integration of AI in BI tools is not just about automating tasks; it’s about uncovering insights that would be impossible for humans to find. AI algorithms are now capable of identifying patterns in vast datasets, offering predictions and recommendations that guide strategic decisions. This AI-driven approach is transforming industries, from retail where it’s used for personalised marketing, to finance where it’s revolutionising risk assessment.

AI features in BI tools are a game-changer for businesses. Features like predictive analytics, AI-generated reports, and natural language queries are making it easier for users to interact with data and derive valuable insights. These tools are becoming more adaptive, learning from user interactions to provide more relevant insights, which in turn streamlines the decision-making process.

• By 2025, more than 60% of industries will adopt easy-to-understand AI techniques in their business intelligence processes. 
• By 2027, the global AI market will grow at a CAGR of 40.5%.
• 84% of business leaders consider AI as fundamental to drive growth objectives. 

Why is this important? 

Data is always getting bigger, and as more AI models come into the fray, data is no longer just embedded in reports from integrated machines, but also in text, speech, images, and music. If it exists, an AI can analyse it – and at this the amount of data available is so significantly larger that humans will struggle to know where to start, much less to analyse it. 

Trend 2: Natural language processing widens the available data for most businesses

Natural language processing (NLP), a subfield of artificial intelligence, analyses natural language data such as texts, speech, and images; this then allows humans to ask questions of the system using natural language. Going hand in hand with the above trend, NLP in BI means that anyone across the organisation can take insights provided by BI software, and ask a few simple questions to get a few simple answers. It can understand user intent and interpret preferences according to the user, so any question can be answered within a few short seconds. 

Why is this important?

A key issue of adopting any kind of new technology is the widening skills gap in employees; while businesses have the capacity to adopt as many new technologies as their budget allows, finding people who know how to efficiently and accurately use that same technology is a much harder matter, leading to the same issues that made them adopt those technologies in the first place. Without someone to interpret and explain those results, they are no closer to understanding their insights. This effectively makes it a non-issue, as anyone with even basic technical skills can understand NLP-based insights. 

Trend 3: Collaborative BI technologies

Although it’s been a couple of years since COVID-19, the fallout is still very much impacting businesses. During the height of the pandemic, on-premises BI solutions couldn’t withstand the pivot to a largely remote workforce, necessitating the rapidfire adoption of cloud-based BI systems. At this nearly all BI and data analytical elements have been shifted to the cloud, allowing your employees to access the data they need wherever they are. 

• 40% of all workloads are already in the cloud. 
• 45% of consumers consider cloud business intelligence critical. 
• Cloud analytics solutions held 68% of revenue share, and this figure is slated to grow. 

Why is this important? 

The growing popularity of cloud-based systems opens up new opportunities for data analytics. As we move further and further away from the COVID-19 pandemic’s fallout, the changes to business will stay – especially the flexibility of cloud-based solutions. 

Beyond flexibility, cloud analytics are also overall cheaper to run, which means SMEs may find it a more accessible option for business intelligence solutions. Additionally, the cloud-based model can work out cheaper for smaller businesses, as it would allow them to access their data and analytics with a cloud-based service pricing model, rather than creating an internal IT infrastructure from scratch.  

Trend 4: Prioritising data quality governance and security

As data gains importance, so does the importance of its security and governance. Advanced encryption techniques, data masking, and access control mechanisms are being implemented to protect sensitive data. Additionally, with the advent of technologies like blockchain, data governance is becoming more transparent and secure, ensuring that data is not just safe but also ethically managed.

As a result, data quality management transcends basic accuracy. It’s about creating a framework where data is not only precise, but also fit for its intended use. With regulations like GDPR, the need for compliance adds another layer to data governance, making it a strategic priority for businesses. Advanced data governance tools are being leveraged to automate compliance, ensuring data is not only clean but also legally compliant.

Why is this important?

With every passing year, the amount and complexity of data that we have at our fingertips grows considerably, and so do the laws governing the use of that data. While legal ramifications take a longer time to catch up to the pace of technology, it always does eventually, and companies will need to comply with that data if they wish to remain in operation. Additionally, security issues can ruin a company – all it takes is one security breach, and a wealth of data will end up on the internet. As a result, companies need to prioritise both the quality of the data that they have, and maintain high security regulations to protect that data. 

Just how critical is data quality?

For a business to run efficiently, ensuring its data quality is of the highest standards is essential to mitigate operational and decision-making risks. If the data is fragmented, biased, or lacks integrity, it can have a profound impact on the overall business success. Duplicate entries, inaccuracies, or inconsistencies can lead to bias and misunderstanding of the situation for the company, and decisions made can steer the business in the wrong direction

For businesses that need that data for decision-making, this can be catastrophic. 

Trend 5: Democratic data

There are two ways in which data is democratised in 2024. 

The first is the establishment of a data-driven culture: this requires more than just access to data; it requires a mindset shift. Businesses are investing in training programs to imbue their workforce with data literacy, ensuring that every decision, from the C-suite to the operational level, is backed by data. 

The second are self-service analytics tools. Self-service analytical tools are breaking down barriers between data and decision-makers. These tools are becoming more intuitive, with user-friendly interfaces and natural language processing capabilities, enabling users to ask questions and receive insights in plain language. 

Why is this important?

This is fostering a more agile decision-making process, where insights are not bottle-necked in the IT department but are accessible to all who need them. As a result, businesses heading into 2024 and beyond have a much greater portion of their employees involved and aware of the daily decision-making processes, which leads to better operations overall. 

Conclusion 

The BI landscape in 2024 is a blend of technological advancements and cultural shifts. It’s not just about adopting new technologies – it’s about embracing a new way of thinking about, and interacting with, data. By integrating AI, prioritising data governance, and democratising data access, businesses can unlock the full potential of their data, driving innovation and maintaining a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving digital world.

If you are looking for a tech partner to help you navigate the world of BI and data, get in touch with our partners at Cleverbit Software. Their team specialises in guiding businesses through their data analytics and visualisation journey, bringing tangible business insights to the forefront. Find out what a BI solution could do for your business with a no-strings-attached consultation and workshop with their team.

The post Business Intelligence Trends 2024 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you don’t have the time to read this article now, you can download the PDF version of Marketing Trends 2024 for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading.

For the past three years running, brands have been living on borrowed goodwill. They have been happily jumping onto every bandwagon without thinking more deeply than showcasing their innovative thinking. 

Consumers don’t want just innovation. Consumers want action. Consumers want the brands they follow to speak up for them. Consumers – especially the younger generation, the ones that have yet to settle their loyalties with one brand – know that their purchasing power has a way of changing the status quo, and aren’t afraid to wield it. 

In 2024, businesses are practically the only trusted institution remaining. Governments, NGOs, and media entities are all lagging behind. Their ability to influence their audiences, their equity, and the power of their voice is all eroding underneath the faster-paced, louder business presence. 

But this doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way. 

And marketing in 2024 will mean very little unless this is understood very clearly by the brands doing the marketing. 

This is not a year where you can please both sides. This is a year where brands have to make a decision on which consumers they want to speak to – and to consistently speak to them thereafter. 

And they can do that by speaking where consumers will hear them. 

A snapshot of 2023: 

Marketing grows more complicated every year that passes. 

There’s new technology to use. There are new audiences to speak to. There are new voices added to an already crowded fray.  Every campaign has to be better than the ones of the year before. Every campaign has to cut through the noise of what’s happening outside the little slices of the world that brands live in. 

And 2023 had a lot of noise. The world is in crisis, and has been for a while – wars, recessions, climate crisis, growing dissatisfaction, protests on protests. 2024 will not see things get better immediately (and could possibly see things getting worse) – but as we said in our Consumer Macro Trends blog, there is light at the end of the tunnel for marketers. 

Brands just need to put in a little more work to make sure they’re on the right side of the conversation. 

Marketing trends in 2024: innovation, escalation, personalisation

Barriers between consumers are shrinking – and something that happens halfway around the world will be heard everywhere in a matter of seconds. 

But it isn’t just for bad news. Brands that do good – or at least their best to do good – will find that their accolades are shouted about in markets that they might not have previously considered – and the old method of communicating with their consumers based on their basic demographics is proving itself to be lacking when it comes to this generation of consumers. 

In 2024, brands aren’t speaking to audiences that are bound by causes, by opinions, by the way that they see things in the world, by the technology that they use, by a deep and understated need to find themselves in marketing. 

It means better conversations, deeper analysis of those audiences, and best of all, the room to let creativity go wild. 

It means innovation, escalation, and personalisation.

Trend 1: Innovation 

• Short-form video has the highest ROI of all marketing ventures. 
• 79% of consumers want to use AR before buying a product. 
• 65% of all internet traffic is conducted via mobile 

We live in an age of unmatched connection. Everything, from customer service to entertainment, is available immediately and in its full scope. 

Consumers no longer like to wait. As new technology is dreamed of, finding consumers who are willing to wait for your brand to keep up with current events is harder and harder – so, as they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. 

But it’s not just a case of having a website. 

There are technologies available today that make your brand experience an experience. Whether it’s using AR to showcase your products in real time, or hopping onto the latest social media trend in video, you can’t avoid beating technology, so you might as well join it. 

In 2023, the metaverse was all the rage. This isn’t the case in 2024, but we’re seeing fringe technologies like AR and VR command attention.

It isn’t really about the tech. 

For consumers, it’s about the brand; it’s about knowing what product or service they’re buying is actually what they want. Globally, the real value of wages is down. Globally, there is a sense of being out of control, and being unable to fix the big, glaring issues that affect most of society. Something that takes them out of that state of thinking – even if it’s only a little thing – will make waves. 

Case study 

Hand in hand with ten leading ASD associations and over 100 patients, Samsung released a free app called ‘Unfear’ that pairs with their Galaxy earbuds to help people with auditory sensitivities live their lives freely. The app, which is AI-enabled, blocks distressing noises and plays sounds to cover the noises that distress that user in particular – and suppresses what it can’t block. 

 Trend 2: Escalation – deeper communication fostered

• 40% of marketers see controversy as inevitable. 
• The increase of over 2.3 million US citizens as cross-border buyers precipitates greater cross-border and no-border purchases in 2024. 
• 76% of consumers are using social media as a search engine. 

If you’re marketing in 2024, you’re marketing to the entire world – both the good and the bad. 

Brands have been slowly, inexorably going global since the creation of the internet, but it was after COVID-19 that globalisation really peaked. On the one hand, it’s an excellent opportunity to court the kind of audience that might be difficult to find locally; on the other, it means that your conversations are subject to a lot more scrutiny than they might have been initially. 

Coupled with an audience that has become increasingly stratified and a worldwide obsession with black-and-white thinking, brands have to dig deeper to make the kind of conversational connections that they used to – and that’s not taking into account the moments when those conversations go wrong. 

This isn’t bad for brand. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Consumers like this care deeply about a company – so deeply that they see brands as extensions of themselves, extensions of how they think about the world, extensions that they can proudly champion. 

While it means that brands need to be more careful about what they say, and craft their narrative to fall on the side of the conversation they want to be on, audiences today are smart and dedicated to the companies that they want to see thrive. For brands, it’s an easy win, and a hard road to get there. 

This doesn’t mean that brands will always be in the right. Controversy is part of the brand experience for 2024, and no amount of hedging your bets is going to help you avoid that.

If you find a position you’re willing to stand by, stand by it. If you find an argument you want to make, make it. If you think that an issue has no place for you to communicate in, stay quiet, and communicate about an issue you can talk about. 

Brands cannot afford to stay silent.  

What does this mean for you and your business?

You have to pick a side, and you have to talk. Controversy is unavoidable – that isn’t a bad thing. There will always be an audience that will see the side of things that you see, so if you’re happy to continue to communicate with that audience, then do so. If you’re not, you need to communicate with the audience that you are happy to talk to. 

Staying silent, pleasing both sides, and simply walking back any controversial statement has diminishing returns. It’s time for your brand personality to take the centre  

Case study 

Ahead of the release of Scream VI, QYOU created a series of interactive content campaigns that played out across social media in order to draw the interest of both new and existing fans of the franchise. They employed over 16 creators in four different campaigns that culminated in 17.5M views, 1.9M engagement, and an overall click-thru rate nearly 3x the platform’s benchmark. 

Trend 3: Personalisation – the individual, not the audience

• 56% of consumers state they will become repeat buyers after a highly personalised experience. 
• 92% of businesses will be investing in AI to create better personalised experiences.
• 62% of consumers will move away from a brand if it does not provide personalised recommendations.

The amount of data brands have at their disposal is staggering – so it isn’t surprising that consumers expect more from their experiences with brands than what they currently get. Add in the lingering effects of the post-pandemic chaos, and the fact that there is simply too much choice for consumers to make, and you have a perfect storm of consumers that both expect a personalised experience from brands, while maintaining a modicum of privacy and rigidly aware of the minor factors that can make or break a successful brand interaction. 

Think of cookies. 

Cookies offer that very personalisation by knowing you: knowing what you browse, knowing what you buy, knowing where you go when you want to read something or spend some time on the internet. However, as a result of the changing legal requirements around consumer data privacy – pushed into law by the same consumers who thrive on personalised shopping approaches – third party cookies are on their way out. 

Consumers have an overabundance of choice available to them, and there are few brands who will be able to withstand an audience deciding to switch. As consumers more heavily consider brands as an extension of their own selves, they expect to see a reflection of what they find interesting in the brand selection process to start with, and for brands to know them as well as all that collected data suggests. 

Case study 

Dove teamed up with Open Source Afro Hair Library and Edelman to launch the ‘Code My Crown’ campaign, a free to use guide that teaches young gamers and developers how to code natural and protective hairstyles in video games. The guide follows on from Dove’s previous efforts to end race-based hair discrimination in workplaces and schools and champion a real change in the world for the individual. 

What does this mean for you and your business?

You probably already have data on your consumers. Now it’s time to dig deeper into it, and find the aspects of that data that you can use to show your business knows its audience as well as they know themselves. 

This means occasionally leaning into efforts that might not result in immediate return, but can build your brand’s efforts to stand out, to speak for its consumers, and to create a real, lasting change. 

Trend 4: Fandometrics

• 83% of consumers admit that tie-ins influence purchase decisions. 
• 61% of fans enjoy seeing brands create content that relates to their fandom, provided that they make an effort to understand it. 
• 95% of 2023 content was part of a franchise. 

Fandom has come a long way from being a movement on the fringe edges of awareness; it’s now something that dictates a significant portion of the entertainment industry, and spills over into several others. Brands that partner up with fandoms tend to see a surge of interest in their products, and as 2024 rolls on, the power of the fandom is even more pronounced. 

Tie-ins, brand deals, limited edition offerings: these are all excellent ways to build a conversation with a powerful segment of modern audiences, however it comes with its own pitfalls. Fandom is particularly finicky about how brands communicate to them, and it is likely that any attempt to speak to a fandom by prioritising the brand over the fandom will not be met well. 

Figure out a happy in-between, though, and it’s an excellent way to start an organic conversation with your audience that has a lot of opportunity to keep growing. What it does mean is investing some time into understanding these audience segments – and making sure that they feel listened to.

Case study 

LEGO has recently unveiled their kid-friendly metaverse, a multiplayer crafting-based spin-off of Fortnite, one of the most popular games for the segment they are targeting with over 400 million registered users and around 80 million active players per month. This continues on from Lego’s increasing attempts to digitise their offerings, following their online loyalty program launch, Lego Insiders, this past August. 

What does this mean for you and your business?

Fandom is powerful, and fandom can make you money – but if you’re going to wade into this facet of marketing, you need to know the fandom you’re speaking with will almost certainly be split into factions, and that pleasing all of them is going to be difficult. However, this doesn’t mean you should avoid it: not at all. Study the way other brands interact with fandoms. At the end of the day, this is another conversation, another tie you can build with your consumers, another form of data that you can use – and done well, it has immense potential for lasting brand relationships. 

And in the end…

Business has come a long way since 2020. What started as an upheaval due to COVID-19 has become a completely new way of doing business – and, as a result, a new way of marketing. 

This would be the part where we say there’s no wrong way to market. 

It would be a lie. 

It has become increasingly obvious that the way marketing works has changed, and both marketers and brands have to walk a fine line. Partially due to brands’ easy access to a near never-ending audience, partially due to the fact that that same audience is tired of being marketed to, marketing is no longer as effective as it used to be, and more thought has to go into the messages being relayed to consumers. 

This means understanding those consumers, and also understanding that there is a limit to the amount of marketing messages that those consumers will absorb, much less listen to. 

But this isn’t new. This is the continuation of something that started before now, with a deepening pattern of globalisation and audiences that are inundated with a barrage of information at all times. 

It isn’t hopeless. Most brands can easily pivot into communicating in ways that matter. 

But it takes time, and it takes understanding your audience – and how it changes from one year to the next. 

If you struggle with that, and you need some extra advice, we can help you.

The post Marketing Trends 2024 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Blogs about AI are split into two camps:

AI is an excellent tool for productivity. AI can be used to brainstorm. AI can generate images and texts as a precursor to fully fleshing out a creative campaign. AI can be used to create those creative campaigns.

AI is a legal grey area. AI violates copyright. AI should be used sparingly. AI takes jobs away from artists. 

Neither one is fully right. 

The truth is somewhere in between.

How does AI generate imagery?

AI image generation works like this: you write a prompt. 

The machine extrapolates the meaning of every word. 

It gives you an image. 

Here are a few samples that our Head of Brand created as part of a workshop. 

The problem comes after. 

What is copyright law?

Copyright law is the treaty which governs how creative work is treated. There’s no international copyright law, so instead, artists have to deal with copyright law both for domestic and international use. 

The first copyright law was ratified in 1710. Since then, the amount of content that the various laws covered has ballooned – and this includes what is now happening with AI. 

What does AI have to do with copyright?

Ostensibly, AI violates copyright law. 

The manner of how AI image generators are trained means that they learn off datasets scraped from the internet – most of which are protected. The same reason why you can’t just save an artist’s original work and put it onto a campaign falls through when it comes to AI generators, as the ones that currently exist don’t really make a distinction between fair-use artwork and copyright artwork. 

This theoretically means that every AI generated image trained on that dataset is violating copyright law, opening companies up to legal issues down the line. 

Aren’t there laws governing AI use?

The first EU-wide AI law was proposed in 2021. Amendments to the draft were made in 2023 to also determine the use of generative AI. Discussions are currently underway on how this regulation will look, but a brief explanation is this: works created using generative AI will need to be labelled as such. 

Additionally, the restrictions on the use of AI are determined through a proposed classification system that will hinge AI risk on whether it affects human health, safety, or fundamental rights. Theoretically, the lowest tier, minimal, is where most generative AI content will exist, however a separate category exists that will determine the use of generative AI risk on a case by case basis. 

Broadly, Generative AI use in Europe will have to abide by three main rules:

1. Content will have to be disclosed as generated by AI. 
2. The model itself has to be designed to produce only legal content. 
3. Generative AI companies will have to publish summaries of all the copyrighted data used to train their generative AI model. 

There have been some significant pushbacks to this final point, leading to certain AI models such as Google Bard not launching in Europe entirely. 

The United States copyright law is a little simpler: content that is generated with AI is not considered as art created by human involvement, and therefore the art itself does not fall under copyright law protection. Data that was used to train AI models is under copyright law protection, however this has opened up more, not less, legal issues. 

Copyright law cases using generative AI

Here is a list of some of the current copyright law cases. 

• Sarah Silverman, Chrstopher Golden, and Richard Kadrey have sued OpenAI and Meta for using their copyrighted books as training material for ChatGPT. 
• Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay filed a similar suit in California Federal court. 
• John Grisham, George R.R. Martin and other members of the Authors Guild has also sued OpenAI. 
• Universal Music Group is suing Anthropic AI for copyright violation in training its chatbot, Claude. 
• Sarah Anderson, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz have sued Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt. 
• Getty AI has also sued Stability AI over the use of its materials to train their Stable Diffusion model. 

The outcome of these cases won’t be determined for a very long time, however it’s clear that the artworks themselves do not appear to be at the heart of the lawsuits. Instead, copyright holders are suing the companies that created the AI models themselves, and this is proving to be a difficult battle to win. 

• In the case of Sarah Anderson, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz, two of the cases were dismissed, with only Sarah Anderson’s case proceeding, albeit with limited focus. 
• In the case of Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and Richard Kadrey, as well as Mona Awad and Paul Trembley, John Grisham, and George R.R. Martin, a motion to dismiss the case was filed on the basis that the output is not similar at all to the copyrighted works. A counter-claim was filed by the authors against this motion. 

AI companies are also fighting to get the Copyright Office to class its use of datasets as ‘fair use’, which could have further widespread consequences for copyright law. 

What does this mean for businesses?

At this you’re not breaking the law if you’re using AI-generated artworks – provided you are following the legal rules for AI use in your country, which at this stage do not amount to much.

It is very unlikely that legal proceedings against companies simply using the AI tools will make it to court: instead, it’s the AI companies themselves that will have to field this battle. 

That said, there is another issue that small and medium businesses have to keep in mind, and that is the public opinion of AI-generated imagery. Consumers range form apathetic to irritated about the proliferation of AI-generated imagery, and it’s more likely that companies using AI-generated imagery as part of their creative output won’t face a legal reckoning, but a public reckoning: that of their audiences deriding them for the use of AI in the first place. 

What else should I keep in mind?

At the time of this article, there is nothing tangible to state that using AI-generated imagery violates copyright by the company that is using it. Class action lawsuits are being directed towards the parent companies of those AI models. 

That said, this is an issue that’s changing rapidly. We likely won’t see the full scope or scale of laws governing AI until the very end of its initial development cycle, so somewhere around 2024 – 2025. While governments and institutions around the world are working quickly to try and create laws that will limit harm and risk, the world at large was not prepared for this onslaught of content, and it’s taking a longer time than normal to parse through what this means. 

Use AI speculatively. Enjoy its process

We’re keeping an eye out for what’s coming next. 

The post AI and Copyright Law, Clarified appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Fair warning, this is a relatively long read. If you don’t have the time to take it all in now, you can download the PDF version of Business Trends for 2024 for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading!

Businesses have a lot to combat in 2024. 

The U.S. election cycle. Ongoing unrest in the world. Stricter climate measures shepherded by world governments. Shrinking talent pools and competition for limited resources. A heap of new technologies and subscription services that will provide ever growing amounts of data. 

We’ve already spoken a little about consumer trends, the backbone of trendwatching itself. 

Businesses are no different from consumers here. They are equally impacted by current affairs, and they  should adapt to the changes that are coming their way. Consumers are a ruling class. 

Businesses are what they rule. One feeds into the other. 

2024 business trends can carry on from where we left off. Consumers want personality, immersion, and quality in their services. 

Businesses need simpler data, upskilled employees, and go-to-ground strategies to deliver those promises.

A snapshot of 2023

The pandemic might be over, but the fallout across industries is still a key concern. Manufacturing, shipping logistics, and the price of goods have remained higher than pre-pandemic levels, and it is likely that we won’t see a downturn as limited resources continue to make production difficult.

But beyond the issue of deliveries, there is an issue of capacities. Burnout is on the rise, with 42% of businesses reporting burnout in their workforces. A shrinking talent pool has made it difficult to fulfill some of the legacy roles that have built modern business, such as lead IT and development. The creation of new automated technologies and business intelligence software has also led to the creation of increasingly niche jobs, many of which have limited experts available, and where training may take years to produce employees of that same calibre.

And while AI has definitely increased the productivity of companies, it is also significantly increasing the operational costs of businesses who are opting into the strategic advantage of AI as they pay for access to those AI models. 

2024: the year of simple data, employee prioritisation, and strategy

The biggest driver for 2024 is AI. 

How AI can increase productivity. How AI can help you brainstorm ideas. How AI can pull your human employees away from tasks that are time-consuming and repetitive, better left to a computer. How AI can help enhance the creative you put out. 

AI is a tool that consumers can have diverging opinions on. AI is a tool that consumers can opt out of.

For businesses, it is a necessary asset. There is no future for businesses that opt out of using AI: every industry has been redefined in the last handful of years to require it. 

But AI used for AI’s sake is not going to help. 

In 2024, AI in business means simplifying the data you work with. It means prioritising the roles your human employees play in your organisation. It means developing a strategy that balances resilience, sustainability, and innovation.  

Here’s what that looks like.

A note on trendwatching

Trends exist because consumers exist. Your business exists because you have consumers who make purchases – and those consumers will change their minds as the circumstances surrounding their lives change. 

To understand where trends are coming from means you understand your audience, and that means your business always has its finger right on the pulse of what will work. 

Do businesses need trendwatching?

Every business benefits from trendwatching. Consumers are influenced by the environments in which they live and survive in, and with the way the world is changing, brands have become a way for these customers to showcase what side of history they are on. They use brands as an extension of their value, their personality, their beliefs; they use brands to communicate with other, like-minded people who also use those brands. 

And every business around the world is potentially tied to one of these expressions. Trendwatching means that you are always on the right side of what your audience wants to see. 

Trend 1: Data downscale

• From 2023 to 2025, data will balloon from 120 zettabytes to 181 zettabytes of information. 
• 30% of businesses are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data. 
• 90% of generated data is unstructured. 

Businesses need data to function. 

But simply having that data isn’t enough. Most businesses have more data than they actually need, and no idea what to do with it. Every day, we add more data to the pile, so businesses need to parse through their numbers much faster than they used to. 

Turning that data from numbers and statistics into usable information about their audiences is a job for that self-same AI. 

They need to know which of their products is exceeding their expectations, which of their services has started to dip in efficacy, and what their customers are spending the most time on. 

When social media was still a major change to the business landscape, that data came in dribbles. 

This is no longer the case. 

Businesses in 2024 have too much data to keep track of – and most of the data that is generated and given to businesses today doesn’t fall into neat categories that businesses can look over at their leisure. The rate and speed at which businesses obtain data has become unmanageable and an area that is actively losing businesses profit that they could be making. 

For 2024, AI-led data summaries will become crucial for businesses to start cutting through to the heart of the data that matters to them. AI trained to summarise and produce insights off given BI datasets is going to be a wise investment for organisations in 2024, and will become an essential tool for organisations by the end of the year. 

How does this trend benefit bigger businesses?

Businesses generate data from an enormous number of collection points: transaction rates, digital touchpoints, physical retail, socials, campaigns… – and bigger businesses may have more data to contend with than those that are still in the start-up phase. If it hasn’t happened already, these organisations are already inundated with too much data for them to make meaningful, impactful decisions, and it’s far past the time when an investment in data management should be made. 

How does this trend benefit smaller businesses?

Setting up your smaller business with the capacity to both handle big quantities of data and generate decisive summaries of that data means the path going forward is much smoother in the long run. As these businesses continue to grow and generate more data than they need, AI-powered analysis can help set them up to only draw the relevant information out of a sea of content. 

Trend 2: Employee initiative extensions

• 44% of employee skills will see disruption in the next 5 years. 
• 73% of businesses consider most employees to require reskilling due to AI. 
• 1 in 16 employees may have to switch jobs as a result of changing work habits.

Employees determine the success of your business. 

They are also vastly underprepared for the years that are to come. 

Employees in 2024 are facing an unmitigated change in their working environment, one that will force them to change the way they work the same way Gmail and Google Drive and Slack did. With every business diving feet-first into AI to try and streamline processes, employees face a reckoning to  develop a skillset for a tool that is in its infancy, and won’t see the end of its early development cycle without drastic change. 

And beyond the necessary need to upskill, there is the additional concern that many employees are facing: Where will they fit into work if AI is coming for their careers? 

For 2024, businesses need to invest in their employees: in upskilling them to prepare them for the year to come, in making sure that there is continuous development to address concerns, and in giving their employees a reason to remain with the business.

How does this trend benefit bigger businesses? 

Your biggest asset is always going to be your employees. For larger businesses, investing in your employees now means that the risks of them leaving to find jobs in other sectors is minimised. Retaining employees and upskilling them rather than hiring for new positions is fundamentally better: both from an economical perspective as well as a company culture one. 

How does this trend benefit smaller businesses?

Hiring new employees is expensive. Smaller businesses who are operating on smaller profit margins than larger organisations will struggle to maintain profits if they’re continuously looking outwards to fulfill new roles – and with the shift into new operations affecting every organisation regardless of size, upskilling employees becomes a necessary lifeline for smaller businesses. 

Trend 3: Strategising for sustainability

• 75% of CxOs have increased their sustainability investments.
• 82% of consumers will only buy from companies who match their values.
• 60% of consumer purchasing behaviour is tied to the ethical and environmental aspects of a business, and this increases by 10% YOY.

If sustainability wasn’t a business concern up until now, it’s going to become one in 2024. Consumers are increasingly driven by their values, and paying far greater attention to what a company does – or does not – do. Boycotts, which have historically proven to be one of the less effective methods, have started to gain efficacy as consumers refuse to populate businesses which no longer share their values or act in a way they don’t like. We’ve seen threads of this in previous years, but it is becoming a matter that businesses can no longer put off. 

And it involves a lot more than just green initiatives.

Businesses will get no more second chances from here on out. They are communicating with a population that is disaffected by its experiences, and has determined that there must be a line drawn somewhere. For most businesses, that line exists in black and white, and they will fall on one side or the other depending on consumers’ personal preferences. 

Sustainability in 2024 is resilience. It’s staying afloat in the face of both the internal – remote working, employee talent shrinkage – and the external factors. It’s realising that businesses, now more than ever, have become a language to the people they service – and it’s realising that, to remain on the right side of that language, they have to pivot, over and over again. 

Data. Skills. Sustainability. 

Businesses who want to move forward in 2024 will not find these trends surprising – but the speed at which these factors have developed is leaving very little room for error. 

But there’s hope, still. Businesses can find their way back to what they set out to achieve, find a purpose that fits them, find values that they want to champion. Where all the other work is external, 2024 will have businesses focusing internally, on what they can do with resources they already own or resources they should have in play. 

And if they’re not quite sure what those resources are, there’s companies that can help them figure it out. 

We’ve published these trend reports for years. And we’re always willing to help – just drop us a line!

The post Business Trends for 2024 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Fair warning, this is a relatively long read. If you don’t have the time to take it all in now, you can download the PDF version of Consumer Behaviour Macro Trends 2024 for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading!

Let’s talk about trends. 

Last year, the trends we spoke about were trends we’ve seen before. After the great reset of COVID-19, with the world still wheeling to try and understand how to move forward, humans pivoted towards what they knew, and focused on regaining a little bit of their equilibrium. Trends that we’d already seen years before – the rise of subscription services, the infancy of AI, the ongoing consumer demand for more sustainability and accountability and economical responsibility- cropped up again, with a much louder voice. 

2024 is the same. The trends we’re seeing now are trends that we’ve seen before – but they’re taking on new importance in the face of global uncertainty, mass-production of content and the shrinking availability of free time, and the growing discontent of our circumstances. 

But there is light, and there is hope. 

Here’s how to capture that light. 

2024: the year of personality and immersion

The biggest driver for 2024 is AI. 

What AI can do. What AI can’t do. How we can leverage AI for better business. What AI tools can help us create more organised, productive lives. Can AI write a better story than a human? What can AI make of this artwork?

The technology available to us in 2023 has pushed the limitations of what we know far higher than we could have anticipated, and we’re heading into 2024 with the full breadth of human capability at our fingertips. 

But it’s not the technology that drives consumer behaviour – or at least, not permanently. New technologies introduce consumers to new possibilities, but when it comes to putting their money down, consumers still want the same things:

Personality. Immersion. Quality. 

Why do we use trendwatching?

Every business caters to people. Every business has to make money to survive. 

Trendwatching is the intersection of where those two facts collide. Trendwatching is what people are doing, what people are interested in, and where they’re spending money. Trendwatching is taking the behaviours of the world as a collective and identifying the big shifts in behaviour that led us to where we are now. 

Trendwatching shows you where money is going next, and how your business can get there. 

Do I need trendwatching as a small business?

Yes. Every business, at every size, needs trendwatching. 

Public opinion moves quickly, and your consumers will change their minds much faster than a business can pivot to meet their demand. People are inspired by the world: they’re always online, always learning, and always repurposing their understanding. 

Businesses have to keep up.

How does trendwatching benefit business?

You get to survive another year. 

Trendwatching isn’t something you can opt into. Trends exist, whether your business pays attention to them or not. Your consumers change, whether you want them to or not. The least you can do as a business is understand how your consumers are changing, and how to keep speaking to those consumers in a way that makes sense for you, for your business, and for them.

Our CEO on Trends: 

“Trends are never the answer for every question your business can have about the future. They’re just another part of a complex set of tools we need to use if we want to stand out in a crowded market. You might read through our trend documents and think that there’s very little that’s of relevance to you today, but I can guarantee that at some point over the next year you’ll come across a situation that you’ll understand a little better, or a problem that you can solve quicker, if you can make sense of it in the framework of a trend that’s affecting the world or your specific industry.

Trendwatching is not speculation. We’re not trying to guess what’s coming in the future. We don’t have a crystal ball.

It’s simply looking out at the world and analysing patterns to help us figure out what’s changing, so that we can change and stay ahead of the curve.

Every year we work on trendwatching we realise that it’s becoming even more of an acute need. The past three years have shaken so many of our beliefs, and they’ve reinforced so many others, that trendwatching has become an essential part of what we do, and we believe that it should be a part of what you do, too.

As the world evolves at an ever-faster pace, the only thing we can do is our utmost to keep ahead of it, moving at breakneck speed to keep up with what we see as the major shifts impacting people’s behaviour.”

A snapshot of 2023: 

The year is 2023. 

The global cost-of-living crisis continues to impose stricter limitations on the consumer body as a whole. Wars, and the continuing climate change crisis have led to a largely despondent consumer body that’s inundated with bad news. 

A proliferation of AI tools has led to the creation of far more content, but with it comes a wider-spreading circle of misinformation that businesses and consumers parse through have to at unprecedented rates. The internet has shrunk significantly, with fewer online spaces to spend time in without being encouraged to purchase.

Consumers are tired, pushed to the brim of what they can withstand, and looking for brands that will commiserate with them. Lacking admirable public figures and trust in the government, brands have extended beyond their use as a public value identifier and become more or less the only institutions that consumers trust to bring about real change. 

Macro Trend 1: Immersion over innovation

• 56% of consumers consider immersive environments to be better than traditional social media for advertising. 
• 44% of consumers have tamped down on spending except for experiential purchases. 
• There is a 7% increase in consumers who state they will make repeat purchases after a personalised shopping experience, bringing the total to 56% of consumers in 2023. 

Think about the last product you’ve purchased. 

What do you remember from that exchange? We’re willing to bet it wasn’t how you paid. 

Consumers are drowning in technology. Our lives have never been so optimised, connected, or crafted in living memory, and as a result, we’re seeing a lot of technology-based burnout when it’s all that’s been on the news for the last handful of months. 

On the other hand, brands that leverage that technology to create an experience where the technology isn’t at the centre have seen some impressive reactions. 

We can never go back to a world without the technology that we know and have available – but it’s no longer what pulls money in. 

Immersion does. Brand experiences that pull people into a little microuniverse of their own can attract lifelong consumers: ones that will keep coming back to you not just because of your product, but because of the way you sell that product. 

Case study: 

Heinz, an international ketchup brand, has created a collectable sauce packet for all 50 US states, with each one highlighting a regional delicacy. 

But these sauce packets aren’t easy to find, and collectors can win prizes up to $100,000 if they collect them all. Customers can also log onto the Heinz website and play a series of games to further immerse themselves into the Heinz universe. While it’s still early days, the campaign appears to be doing well.

How does this benefit bigger businesses?

The longer you are in business, and the bigger your business is, the easier it becomes to think smaller. Campaigns like this are inherently riskier, and far more expensive than a billboard, but their pay-off is much greater – and in a world that has diminishing opportunities for consumers to relax and enjoy themselves, brands becoming a source of entertainment is a quick way to both build their brand equity, and become known for something outside of their product. 

How does this benefit smaller businesses?

It only takes one great immersive campaign to elevate a smaller business into a bigger business – but everything else tracks the same as for larger businesses. People are still bored. There’s less of the internet to just lose themselves in. The sense of FOMO and the sense of adventure is still prevalent. A small business that prioritises immersion in its products will draw attention, and pull consumers towards it. 

Macro Trend 2: Humanmade

• 47% of UK consumers concerned they might end up interacting with AI more than people. 
• 61% of US consumers do not consider AI-generated materials as art. 
• More than half of US Consumers prefer human-created content to AI-generated content.

Can you tell the difference between content made by a machine and content made by humans?

Your consumers can. 

2024 is going to be the start of a rising reliance on generative content using AI. As more tools become available faster and the bulk of creators turn to AI to streamline their process, content that is wholly crafted from start to finish by humans is going to matter more. Regardless of where you personally fall on the side of AI tools, or whether you show them as a positive or a negative aspect to your business, consumers still mistrust AI tools even as they use them. 

On a more practical note, the same generative AI tools that we are using to generate that content are in their infancies, and the ongoing changes being continuously adapted to their datasets, the current discussion about the use of generative AI in Europe, and public opinion on the veracity of generative AI as a tool make this trend a little more complicated than just siding with one segment of your audience over another. Regardless of your final choice, human-created content isn’t on its way out: the exact opposite. As the market floods with AI-generated stories, videos, photographs, artworks, companies will be expected to push and protect human-created artworks over those that are made by generative AI.  

This isn’t to say that generative AI shouldn’t, or can’t, be used in tandem with human content. Generative AI’s capacity to create is still considered impressive, just not solely on its own.

Case study 

Nikon Peru’s ‘Natural Intelligence’ campaign debuted a handful of months ago, encouraging their consumers to pick up their cameras and fight against generative AI creation. Using real-life locations and photographs taken using Nikon cameras, each image is accompanied by a generative AI prompt that highlights how truth, in this case, is far stranger than our imagination. 

How does this benefit large businesses? 

It’s tempting to fall into the idea of using generative AI as your sole content creation machine, particularly if you’re only looking at cutting some costs and increasing productivity. Larger businesses have the capabilities of paying for unique artist collaborations that are used on their own or in tandem with AI. Regardless of company size, human-made content will sit at a higher premium, and as the AI tools that we use become even more intricate and hard to tell apart, consumers will look for content that they can definitively tell was created by humans.  

How does this benefit small businesses?

In general, smaller businesses are trusted more than larger businesses, and the use of generative AI as their sole content creation method may have a negative effect on consumers’ opinion of the business, depending on how the business markets itself. Smaller companies that market themselves as artisanal or independent may find that consumer opinion is very quick to condemn solely AI-generated content, and that it goes against their business values in the eyes of their consumers. 

Macro Trend 3: Money over Matter

• 78% of consumers consider themselves worse off heading into 2024. 
• 69% of consumers have slowed down or pulled back on non-essential spending. 
• 75% of consumers are worried about the price of essential goods. 

Money has been a concern for three years running, so this isn’t really a new trend – but we’re likely to see the cost-of-living crisis worsen in 2024, unless something drastic changes the status quo. 

Here’s the truth of the matter: consumers will still try and buy what they like, but with less disposable cash at hand, they’re going to scrutinise their purchases before they make them. Quality, durability, and whether or not they can use it repeatedly are going to be questions at the forefront of their minds, and with so much of the essentials becoming expensive, they’re not going to pay a penny more than the perceived value of the goods in mind. 

To this end, brand value is going to skyrocket in importance. The perceived value of a brand by its consumers becomes one of the determining factors in whether or not your audience buys from you, whether they see brand value in the durability of the item, or in the legacy that it carries behind it. Legacy brands who have been in operation for years – such as 170-year-old clothing firm Levi’s, or similarly-aged camera company Leica – are going to be far more highly-rated than new brands, but to a certain extent, price and a good story can sway your consumers significantly. 

Case study

Nisolo, an American shoe manufacturer, ships every one of their products with a Sustainability Facts label that provides consumers with additional information on how their shoes are made. Subdivided into ten categories and featuring public data as their cornerstones, the Sustainability Facts label is intended to be used by the fashion industry to reduce the abuse and harm of an industry that is often obfuscated. 

How does this benefit bigger businesses?

Businesses that have marketed a product well enough to grow significantly have one thing on their side that smaller businesses won’t have yet: legacy, heritage, and a story to tell. Legacy brands and brands that have been around long enough that the consumers’ ancestors would have used the item are going to attract attention, especially as the rising rates of practically everything else forces consumers to trim the fat from their lives, and focus only on bargains. Leaning into your heritage as a larger business, and highlighting your many years of service or your particular attention to detail, will do a lot to sway consumers to keep you when they cut everything else in their lives. 

How does this benefit smaller businesses? 

There are two separate paths that smaller businesses can take to benefit from this trend, and they’re these: add more freemium services to your already-existing product range, or focus on the durability and usability of your products. 

Consumers who have turned away from legacy brands, or don’t have that necessary connection in the first place, are looking for products that have the same aspects of certain heritage brands without the steep price tag. Highlighting that you can use this product or this service for years without any additional incurred costs is a good way of getting consumers on your side.  

Personality. Immersion. Quality. 

2024 won’t change the game for most businesses, and it hasn’t drastically shifted where the goal posts are – but the importance of a good brand, a good story, and good communication have grown astronomically. 

2024 will be a defining year for businesses. Second chances will be rarer: consumers are less likely to spend money on a product or a service they tried and didn’t like. Your brand’s value is going to be tied intrinsically to what people are willing to pay for it in a way that’s never been seen before. 

But there’s hope. These trends show that there is light at the end of the tunnel – and that it’s just a little extra work before the payoff. As a business, these trends are going to help you decide where your business is going next, and whether it’s going to grow into a brand that will be active a hundred years from now.

And if you need help making sense of these trends for your industry, or you want to know how we got here, there’s a way to do that too. 

We’ve published these trends reports for years. And we’re always willing to help – just drop us a line!

The post Consumer Behaviour Macro Trends 2024 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Most studies on social media usage and metrics tend to look at audiences present in much bigger countries, and some of those results can be difficult to apply to Maltese businesses, Maltese consumers, and Maltese behaviours. With the benefit of a much broader range of responses behind them, global studies predict behaviours that might take a longer time to get to Malta – and in this, the studies that we can use to predict local behaviour are limited. 

There’s a way around it, of course. 

You can create your own survey. 

Here’s one we prepared earlier, and what it means for your business. 

The survey

Our aim was to understand how consumers use social media. 

Social media plays an important role in businesses around the world: it’s become a significantly important e-commerce platform, brand building tool, and a communication method between businesses and consumers. It’s also become an early way to predict what’s going to happen in the future. 

People talk. Those conversations happen everywhere, but a lot of them happen online, and those online conversations are how we can tell what’s going to happen to businesses in the future, what trends will emerge as the year closes out and a new one begins, and how to work within what the early signs are telling you. 

For this survey, we had an additional aim: to produce a report that would highlight Malta’s unique perspective on social media. As a small island, finding statistics that apply to us specifically can be a struggle. 

So we ran a survey, and collected answers through Facebook. 

Now, we have our own report to look at. 

Here’s what we found out. 

Less than 40% of 13- to 17-year-olds use Facebook multiple times a day.

Ages 25 – 34 use Facebook most frequently, with 27.5% checking Facebook multiple times a day, followed by 35 – 44 at 20.83%. 

Facebook has a 93.1% penetration rate in Malta. This means that mostly everyone uses Facebook, and more than that: they use it to find out what their favourite businesses are doing, and they use it often.

Except if they’re younger. If they’re younger, Facebook usage in that age group is down. For 13-17 year olds, the most popular platforms to use constantly are Instagram (74.4%), Tiktok (69.2%), and Youtube (44.7%). 

What does this mean for your business?

If you’re not catering to this audience, not a lot – you can go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing if all you’re interested in is short-term sales. 

However, if you’re looking to build your brand, this is a statistic you want to keep an eye on. Facebook might be serving you well right now to attract consumers with the disposable cash to make purchasing decisions, but omitting the importance of the 13-17 age group is a mistake: they’re going to come into their own money eventually, and it’ll be a lot harder to build a connection with clients who don’t know you from their formative years. While it isn’t impossible, nostalgia is a huge connecting point for consumers – and it’s one you need to keep in mind. 

What should you do about it?

Start working on brand representation on other platforms as quickly as you can. This audience in particular needs time and dedication to address correctly – but they’re an audience with a high pay-off when you give them enough time to come to terms with who you are as a brand. 

7/10 13 – 17 year olds use Tiktok multiple times a day.

Tiktok’s hold on the younger generation is well-documented – and Malta hasn’t escaped the wave of Gen Z turning to Tiktok as their primary social media platform, but it goes beyond using Tiktok as a social media platform. From search engine to communication device to source of entertainment, Tiktok’s tiny communities have created real-world consequences for brands: Vaseline has become synonymous with good skincare, makeup brands are struggling to keep ‘Tiktok famous’ products in stock, and companies can build their reputation overnight with one well-memed video. 

What does this mean for your business?

It depends on how early you want to start building up your audience. For most brands, 13-17 is a segment of audience that has limited access to funds that will allow them to purchase your products, and therefore if your business objective is purely to turn a profit, creating a Tiktok profile might not be something that meets that business objective. However, building a brand connection to a younger generation is not necessarily a waste of your time: on the other hand, if that connection has already been put into place before the audience is ready to purchase, you’ll find that the nostalgia factor can prove useful in the long term. 

What should you do about it?

Creating a Tiktok account is not going to waste your time – but if you’re not ready to take that plunge, then you can look into the current trends on Tiktok instead, or consider Tiktok as another marketing platform to take advantage of. There are influencers who will market your products to their audiences, and it’s worth looking into if you’re interested in using Tiktok, but not quite ready to add another social media platform to your list.

⅔ of consumers trust brands more than influencers. 

How likely are you to trust communication about a brand/service from the brand itself?

Influencers were – and still are – a brand staple for a number of reasons: brands tend to struggle to communicate on a human level with consumers, and influencers put a relatable human face on a brand in a way that is difficult to emulate when it’s a corporation speaking. However, influencer burnout is real – and while megainfluencers have already felt the pinch in bigger markets, in Malta it’s only just started to take hold. 

Part of this is because Malta is a smaller country, and so we have far fewer influencers to use. Anyone who has reached the point where they are a recognisable face might already have become old news according to consumers, and consumers who have a specific dislike for that influencer may be repelled away from the brand that aligns itself to them. 

What does this mean for your business? 

If you’re already investing in influencer marketing, you need to take a look at who you’re using. If you have a tendency to choose the same influencers for your campaigns, it might be worth revisiting if those influencers are the right ones to align with your brand. 

What should you do about it? 

Influencer marketing can be effective, so you need to figure out how it’s going to be effective for you. Take a look at your audience: who’s most likely to resonate with them? Is the big-name influencer with a dedicated following that’s been in business for years, or would they relish seeing a fresh face on the scene, someone with a smaller audience but a lot more authenticity? This will depend between brands: there’s no one correct answer for everything, and it’ll depend a lot on the areas you’ve grown your audiences in. Younger audiences might prefer someone their own age; older generations might prefer someone that looks like them or a familiar face from their childhood. To find out, you need to go back to your brand. 

People who prefer watching short-form videos cite Instagram Reels and Tiktoks as their top choices twice as often as Youtube Shorts

Although Youtube has a decent user-base as a platform, its short-form video content hasn’t quite picked up to the same extent as Tiktoks and Instagram reels. Only 25.6% of consumers mention using Youtube Shorts, which can still be a usable audience segment, however it’s worth pointing out that the lower figures may be difficult to overcome given Youtube’s position as a social media platform. Youtube is well known for its longform videos, but Instagram and Tiktok have already claimed a significant share of the short-form audience, and so Shorts can take longer to pay off at the same rate of success. 

What does this mean for your business? 

If you want your content to stand out, creating material for Youtube Shorts is definitely an option, especially if you’re already in the habit of creating short-form video content already. 

What should you do about it?

Take a look at your content. 

Chances are, there’s some content that will serve better as shortform video, and that’s the content that you should consider putting up on Youtube shorts. Content that tends to speak to Youtube’s core nature – crafting, cooking, organising, tech: all those physical, handy things – might tend to do a little better than Instagram reels, which focus on beautiful aesthetics, or Tiktoks, which can tend to cycle through trends faster than other platforms. For content that’s meant to stay online for longer, content that’s explanatory, content that you can turn into a longform video, you might want to try Youtube Shorts. 

Over 50% of surveyed say that brand behaviour affects their purchase decisions.

What you do matters, and this is not new information. Consumers don’t like to support brands that go against their values, and they certainly know that their purchases will make a difference; annoy enough consumers, and your bottom line will suffer. 

That said, you won’t be able to please everyone. This is where you, as a brand, need to decide where your loyalties lie, and how best to meet those loyalties – but regardless of what position you choose, this doesn’t change the fact that the way you act matters to your consumers. 

What does this mean for your business?

Your brand is more than just the products it sells. It’s how it talks to its consumers. It’s what it supports as a movement. It’s how it addresses complaints. If these are aspects of your business that you’ve either neglected or have simply just not paid enough attention to, it’s time to start – and to make a public effort to showcase what your brand stands for. 

What should you do about it?

All of this goes back to brand. Do you know what your brand stands for? Is it something you can put into words? Remember: you can’t please everyone. Your brand is going to behave in ways that will annoy some people, and will please others, and the only thing you can do is decide which side of the conversation you’re going to stand on. This is one thing you can’t avoid: trying to please everyone means you won’t please anyone. Pick your side. 

3 out of 4 people would spend a little more if the brand acted responsibly.

This goes hand in hand with brand behaviour, but it bears a unique perspective in Malta. Maltese consumers are used to irresponsible behaviour – just hop onto any Facebook page and see how they react to the latest construction news – and while it’s true that most of those reactions are negative, what they’re reacting to is largely issues that the average Maltese consumer has already expressed dislike for. 

Brands acting responsibly, like brands choosing a side, means that they are at the heart of those conversations, and championing causes that people feel strongly about means that they’ll create lasting impressions of their brand. 

The monetary pay-off follows naturally then. 

What does this mean for your business?

It’s time to take a look at what causes you’re championing – and if you’re championing none of them, it’s time to start thinking about which ones to add. In today’s world, every brand has to stand for something, and yours needs to as well.

What should you do about it?

Find a cause to support. State that support loudly, and with pride. Consumers aren’t stupid – far from it – and the way that you support initiatives will say a lot about who you are as a company, and conversely, the people who choose to purchase your products. 

Almost 40% tend to choose a local retailer over a global brand.

There’s one great thing about local retailers: the shipping. 

The global shipping industry has been through a couple of rough years – and while it’s starting to ease back into pre-COVID functionality, we’re still a long way off from regaining the same levels as before, and so it’s not surprising that consumers are mindful of where they’re shopping from. Add to that the steep prices that Maltese consumers often have to pay for shipping, and the fact that not every website ships to the island, and the popularity of local retailers makes sense. 

What does this mean for your business?

If there’s a retail aspect to your business, you need to look at how it works. If your biggest competitors on the island are local businesses, that could mean revamping the way that you advertise, the way that you use your e-commerce, the way that you communicate. Local stores can have a big advantage over much larger global storefronts, so it’s important to see where, and what, you can do to make the most of your local consumers. 

What should you do about it?

If you’re struggling to make an impact with local consumers, it might be time to look at what you’re doing to connect with them. Do you post on social media only and leave it at that, or do you also do events? How do people buy your products? If you have repeat consumers, what keeps them coming back? 

Most importantly: do you offer any benefit to your customers that makes you a more appealing option than the bigger stores available online? If you can’t compete on variety, then can you compete on shipping? Once you have those answers, you can start recreating the way your brand exists to locals. 

Every third person follows a brand because of their value alignment within the brand.

This isn’t new information, but people tend to use the brands they support as a larger extension of their own personality, ideals, and character, and so they seek out brands that will align with them on values. This is especially true for younger audiences, and only grows more significant as brands continue to communicate on social media. 

What does this mean for your business?

Similar to championing a cause, this means you need to know your business well enough to understand why consumers follow you, and why they pick your products over any other. There is a reason why your primary consumers are drawn to you, and understanding that reason is the first step to helping your business grow bigger and better. 

What should you do about it?

Take a look at your brand values. Are they still values that you agree with?

If your brand has changed in the intervening years, and you no longer feel as though your brand values represent the brand, it might be time for a change. Whatever adjustment you do make, though, remember this: consumers pick the brands they like for a number of reasons, and it’s not all based on price. Making your brand values clear to your consumers can surprise you. 

34% of all interviewed shop both online and in-store.

We’re a small island. It’s understandable that online shopping is part and parcel of living on that small island: sometimes, the brands that we do want to use don’t come to local stores, or we’re looking for something that no retailer in Malta carries.

What’s interesting to note is that there doesn’t seem to be a big preference for one or the other among the younger generation, the split between shopping online and shopping in-store is about 50/50, and that tapers off as you go up in the age-groups. 

However: the older generation has a tendency to prefer online shopping above shopping in-store, with almost 42% of 35 – 44 year old respondents preferring to shop mostly online.  

What does this mean for your business? 

It doesn’t mean shut down your e-commerce store, but it does suggest that e-commerce is only a small part of the main driver behind which brands local consumers tend to pick. If you’re putting a lot of effort into your online store, but neglecting other aspects of your brand, it might be time to put some of that effort in other areas. 

What should you do about it?

Convenience is still a very important factor to keep in mind, but it can take a lot more forms than just allowing for online purchasing. See if there’s pain points in your business that’s driving people away from purchasing from your brands: you might be surprised at what you find. 

95% of all interviewed are interested in giveaways/competitions if they like the brand.

Say you want to drum up support for an initiative. What kind of prize do you offer?

Overwhelmingly, the answer seems to be this: something that’s related to your own brand, merchandise that they either can’t get through a normal store, or something that’s created specifically for this contest. It’s interesting because brand merchandise has become a status symbol in its own right – we all remember LIDL bringing out its own range of clothing, and how quickly it all sold out. 

What does this mean for your business?

If you’re in the habit of running giveaways, your brand is your biggest asset, and creating products that showcase your own brand is more likely to get you responses that provide some meaningful interactions. 

What should you do about it? 

Brand merchandise. Your brand is followed for a reason, and humans are collectors of the things that they like: give them something to collect.

Why should I know all this?

Whether you’re a local business or not, it highlights a microcosm of the world. Consumer demand changes, and it changes rapidly. 

Brands need to be able to pivot to keep up with what’s going on: this means understanding your values, understanding your brand, and understanding how the combination you work with can influence the audiences you connect with. 

It also means that you need to keep a regular eye on the way that your brand is, and anticipate how it’ll need to change. 

And your brand will need to change. 

The world is getting confusing. Brands need to make their voices heard, but this way forward is pitted with places where they can stumble. 

Understanding your audience is part of the way forward. 

And if you need help figuring out how, we’re always happy to lend a hand.

The post Social Media Use in Malta: A Switch Survey appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

We’re talking about cold outreach. 

What is cold outreach?

Cold outreach is when you phone, email, or otherwise connect with potential customers without having an initial conversation. This could be reaching out to a company you want to work with or a company you know could benefit from your services. Regardless of what the initial aim is, cold outreach can be a highly effective way to source new leads for your business. 

While it could sometimes result in no responses, cold outreach can have its role while growing a small business – and it can be as effective as networking within conferences or reaching out to warm leads. 

Here’s a few ways to make cold outreach work for you and your business. 

1. Do your research first. 

It might sound like there’s not much difference between cold emailing and spam, but the truth is actually very different – provided you do your research first and you only reach out to prospects that you can actually offer something to. It might sound like a small thing, but taking time to do your research will lend your cold outreach a much-needed, and genuine, boost. 

2. Your connection should be personal. 

Nobody likes receiving unsolicited anything – and as people become ever more reliant on email and text as a communication medium, reaching out to someone out of the blue with a really good offer might not manage to cover the initial irritation of reaching out at all. Fortunately, you can mitigate this a little by making sure that you’ve done your research as stated above, and making sure that however you reach out, you make an effort to connect personally with your prospect. 

This could be something simple as checking their LinkedIn profile while you’re drafting your email and including a reference to something they posted about. 

3. Don’t take forever to get to the point. 

Get to the point as quickly as possible. This grabs attention immediately and is respectful of the time of your readers. Make it clear what you’re offering and how you can help – and in plain language. Respecting your prospect’s time will leave a positive impression, even if the answer is ultimately no. 

One of the inherent risks of cold outreach is that you can put a lot of effort into reaching out only to get a no in response – and that’s fine. You won’t always connect with the people you’re reaching out to every time, and this is an acceptable part of cold outreach. 

Is cold outreach worth the time and effort?

Yes. Absolutely.

You might not ever meet your perfect client through networking or in-person connections – they could be located in another country, or they could simply be working with another company and you might have reached out at the wrong time. 

With cold outreach, however, the numbers are on your side. If you do your research, the number of potential leads you can reach out to increases exponentially, and a few replies will definitely come your way. 

Ultimately, cold outreach is a good way to connect with potential clients, whether or not they ultimately say yes. Making sure you have a good impression right at the outset will help keep you top of mind for when the client does need your help – and pass on your details to other clients who could potentially use your services. 

The post Is cold outreach for SMBs worth it? appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.