The five marketing trends that almost no one is talking about

Ask any business owner or senior marketer and they’ll tell you the same thing. Putting a name to a business, brand or product can be difficult. Often the best question to start with is why are we doing what we’re doing? As with many business founders, my own experiences of working in other businesses gave me the answers I needed – as I left to set up my own marketing consultancy, I was clear with my why and my how.

Transparency and accountability are fundamental to performance. So too is having the right attitude and culture built around questioning conventional wisdom and being prepared to take calculated risks. As a marketing consultancy looking to have a real impact on the companies we work with, it’s essential we have an open approach; to be prepared to have honest conversations about sales and marketing capability, resourcing and strategy. 

At the same time, we wanted to root ourselves in technology; working with businesses adopting or developing the tech that would help shape the course of the future. Our experience of working in this space means we understand speed is nothing without direction, and fast growing businesses can’t afford to run down too many blind alleys.

Two words summarise these core beliefs and underpin our approach and hence our own name was born. Open Velocity. 

As we turn our attention to the key trends in this report, many businesses have been riding a post-covid resurgence, only for that confidence to now be tempered by the cost of living crisis and near recessionary pressures enveloping the UK. 

2022 was a very hard year for many businesses, with AIM’s performance vs the FTSE 100 as evidence that small businesses are struggling most of all. According to Layoffs. FYI, the UK tech sector saw 2,000 people lose their jobs in 2022 as companies cut costs, following a trend inherited from the US. 

Confidence appears to be returning to VC in 2023 and as global productivity slows and R&D at larger companies continues to drop, the degree to which venture capital can stimulate innovation is increasingly in the spotlight. 

And so we reach a familiar crossroads – one that sees strategic businesses turning one way, recognising the longer term opportunity as well as a need to deal with the imminent storms. These businesses are reevaluating their strategy and business plans, whilst also planning for the recovery and ensuring their businesses are continuing to meet a market need with a well positioned, well marketed product or service. 

And in the other, turn businesses unable or unwilling to look beyond the current quarter and who adopt scatter gun tactics, with little to no thought to how the marketplace and the target audience is changing. And changing it most definitely is. 

With chinks of light already emerging, we wanted to look beyond the here and now and address the trends that will impact businesses in 2024, 2025 and beyond. 

To do so, we’ve lent on our own experience of working with future-focused businesses and combined this with the emergent trends, both in marketing and business growth. We’ve distilled this into just 5 key ideas that we believe will shape the playing field for businesses beyond the current economic climate. 

We hope you enjoy it.

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