DSIGN’s insight on 2020 Market Outlook

By Christy Leung

In DSIGN, we don’t follow trends, we forecast what’s next. To anticipate the coming year, we have created benchmarks based on the key 2020 market outlook, covering Digitalisation, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), opportunities in China markets, and Sustainability-Oriented Innovation (SOI).

Digitalization

Despite the fact that most industries have deteriorated from the economic downturn this year, the silver lining effect from COVID-19 has indeed created opportunities for the digital marketing industry. The pandemic has forced businesses to make distinct decisions where marketing services shift from previously being offline to now being online in order to survive in the market. We predict that this momentum will continue for the foreseeable future even after COVID-19 is tackled. Research shows that:

51% of the world population (3.96 billion) use social media
There was an 8.2% increase in internet users between 2019 and 2020, which indicates that 346 million people came online for the first time in 2020
Each person has approximately 9 social media platforms on average, indicates that people are using a wider variety of social media platform than ever before
Daily time spent using the internet worldwide is 6 hours 43 minutes, 6 hours 16 minutes in Hong Kong and 5 hours 50 minutes in China

Source: https://datareportal.com/reports/future-factors-september-2021

All this data indicates the continuous expansion of the online market, where people are spending more time doing more things online with their connected devices. Thus, marketers should try and take advantage of this growth in online usage with a balanced social mix. Yet instead of trying to gain additional reach from new audiences, marketers should target the existing audiences for a variety of contexts on one to two social media platforms for its organic post, along with the offline channels to deliver a more holistic brand message via omnichannel.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Survey results show that 48% of marketing agencies claimed that ‘finding new clients is the biggest overall pain point in 2020. This highlights the importance of customer relationship management (CRM) for marketing agencies to maintain well-established relationships and revenue growth with the existing B2B clients. Thus, DSIGN will continue acting as a strategic partner to our clients for long-term relationship development.

Source: https://marketingland.com/2021-outlook-for-digital-marketing-agencies-the-future-is-bright-283365

The rise of China’s Market

Brands based in Asia are gaining increasing global interest and momentum, and the growing digital influence of Asia is going to reshape the global consumer demand and expectations, this demonstrates the significant opportunities and potential Asia, noticeably the Chinese market holds. The 2020 Alexa Report shows that:

In 2020, Chinese platforms account for more than half of the world’s top 20 websites by traffic volume, with 5 of them being Chinese e-commerce sites
China accounts for 7 out of the 13 world most-used social media platforms
Asia B2C e-commerce spent $1.41 trillion in 2020 which accounts for more than half of the B2C e-commerce market spending worldwide.

Source: https://datareportal.com/reports/future-factors-september-2021

A prediction is made that the greater use of Chinese platforms will reshape the global User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) expectations, with it shifting toward a more social-oriented algorithm on the UI. Most importantly, this data indicates that Asia’s internet brands are getting more and more popular with international audiences and are starting to reshape the western platforms in the future.

Sustainability-Oriented Innovation (SOI)

In recent years, marketers have begun to view sustainability as a component of their business strategy. Apart from suggesting sustainable solutions to create top-line value and bottom-line savings for clients, we ensure that our clients’ words are met with tangible action to enhance their brand story and meet their business objectives. Likewise, DSIGN believes that marketers should implement a sustainability-oriented innovation approach by making intentional changes to the company’s philosophy and values, in order to establish social and environmental value in addition to economic returns. For instance, corporate social responsibilities which refer to environmental protection and social responsibility entail improving business operations and processes to become more efficient, with the goal of dramatically reducing cost and waste.

Conclusion

To conclude, DSIGN, as a sustainability-oriented agency, does not only focus on the present but the future. Alongside the opportunities and market trends mentioned above, we take into account digitalization and sustainability-oriented innovation when identifying opportunities and risks to ensure that a coherent vision, value, and actionable brand strategies are delivered to our clients on every project.

References：

https://datareportal.com/reports/future-factors-september-2021 https://marketingland.com/2021-outlook-for-digital-marketing-agencies-the-future-is-bright-283365 https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/what-marketing-trends-to-expect-in-2021/ https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/deloitte-review/issue-10/sustainability-2-0-innovation-and-growth-through-sustainability.html Edited by DSIGN Team For cooperation, please contact: info@dsignhk.com