Council Post: Five Predictions For Marketing In 2021

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It’s late summer in 2021. The Covid-19 vaccine has been widely distributed, and business and consumer behavior has returned to a new normal. The recession isn’t over, but things are looking brighter. Consumer spending and jobs are recovering.

OK, so this may be wishful thinking because none of us really knows what will happen, but I’m an optimist.

As president of a marketing firm with a focus on communications and customer engagement, I decided to predict what some of these changes might mean for brands and marketing so that the pragmatic optimists among us can start planning today. 

1. Two-way conversational marketing will be here to stay.

SMS, while still useful and ubiquitous, is very 2020. I expect that rich communication services (RCS) will gain greater traction, and leading brands will deploy it at scale to engage with customers in an innovative, bidirectional way. The Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI) and Google’s RCS Chat made this possible. Industries that are already achieving a competitive advantage by using this new, compelling mode of conversational communications are B2C subscription services — think Spotify, StitchFix, etc. — but “traditional” brands in retail, travel and hospitality will likely deploy RCS to drive engagement and loyalty.

By early 2022, I predict banks, fintech and insurance companies will be ramping up as well. There’s a chance that restaurants — specifically national chains — and the ordering delivery platforms they’ve increasingly been reliant on since the pandemic first struck will also start using RCS or integrations with apps like Facebook Messenger for this style of two-way communication.

Your brand should already have an always-on channel, a means where your customers can reach out to resolve an issue and ask questions. Perhaps this is your website, app, Facebook page or 800 number, and responding falls to your customer support team. In 2021, winning brands will have pushed the envelope on this model, integrating marketing into the customer support mix. This means these brands will be in a position to not just respond to customer inquiries, but also analyze their response so as to anticipate their needs.

Why is this so potent? Because in every response, there are breadcrumbs of information that help these brands to enhance their current offerings as well as evolve their customer experience. The end result? Customers will not only feel a stronger connection to your brand, but I believe they will likely spend more money with brands that are deploying this two-way mode of dialogue. It’s more of a chess game approach than throwing darts at a wall. The brands that will take the lead in conversational commerce will excel at both strategy and AI to do conversational commerce well.

I anticipate a shift in marketing budgets away from traditional “push” campaigns to more integrated programs and processes that drive conversational commerce. 

3. Successful brands will use chatbots and AI for more than customer service.

Are you sensing a theme here? Yes, it’s true. I predict that the brands that master two-way conversational marketing and commerce will also deploy chatbots and AI. It's important to understand that the potency of chatbots extends far beyond customer support. Top brands will assert ownership of chatbots — from low-code development (which decreases the need for IT involvement) to designing suites of chatbots with personas that match their customer personas in tone, words and attitude. In late 2021, the hottest marketing job might just be the chatbot copywriter.

But it’s the AI that makes chatbots most powerful for marketing use cases. AI is what enables winning marketers to shift from a one-way push mode to a customer experience that is predictive, optimized and personalized. AI and chatbots will become more accessible to marketers, which in turn will drive adoption.

For too long, omnichannel has meant treating all channels equally. But in 2021, the leading brands will shift away from executing unilaterally across all channels, assuming what worked in email would work on mobile and so forth, or using one type of content across all channels. What will they do differently?

We can expect that brands will shift their perspective, adopting a rationalized and curated omnichannel strategy. Put simply, this means they understand which channel has a higher value, so they can more fluidly and strategically optimize content and programs when it matters most, rather than using a broad-brush approach. In addition, they will take personalization across channels to the next level — moving from testing to mainstream. Successful marketers understand that if you are not personalizing to the individual, you’re failing. I’m hopeful that other brands will quickly catch up. 

5. The status quo will likely remain unchanged for Google and Facebook.

Despite the antitrust and privacy hearings of 2020 and the push for regulation, I believe nothing much will change in 2021, even with our new government. The two giants will continue to be the best bet for brand advertising, so will budgets hold strong. Nipping at their heels, though, are the wireless carriers; their near-perfect view of consumer behavior means they could be a contender that marketers should be keeping an eye on — perhaps for 2022 strategies. 

What do I want you to take away from these predictions, right now in the fall of 2020? It’s that by this time next year, key infrastructures like CCMI will be scaling, and enabling technologies are within reach. First adopters, those innovative and creative enough to strategically experiment, already have a toe dipped in, and you can be sure their foot and leg are not far behind. Even in the thick of today’s pandemic and recession, savvy marketers need to start thinking about cutting-edge technologies now. 

Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?