The economy of a delta driven by 1.6 billion people has suddenly discovered itself turning into a beautiful butterfly from a small neglected caterpillar. As the economy of the new Asian tiger has diversified, so has the buying behavior of the consumers of this country. The more we got exposed to the global trends, the more we demanded from our local brands. We are aware, we are hungry, we are ready. Are the brands ready and up for the challenge? Well, diving deep will always help.
As soon as the millennials have taken over the majority share of buying power, slim fits has replaced bell bottoms, men have their own facewash and moms have started to buy potatoes online. However, we are still living in a very interesting stage of market evolution where both the millennials and Gen X shop together. Two different ranges of age, taste, attitude and adapting mindset. The younger generation presumably is more welcoming towards newer market trends whereas Gen X absolutely love to stay within their comfort zone. This may mean sticking with the traditional ways of marketing where they are more in the face of their customers, e.g. going to trade shows and marketing using tabletop displays as well as handing out leaflets and business cards. This can make them feel more in control of who sees and who it is targeted towards. Standing on 2018, the new age marketers are constantly changing the way they market their products. Newer marketing trends are coming in considering customers of varied type and taste. Who would’ve thought that one day people will be buying vegetables online and those will be delivered right in front of your doorstep within one hour? Well, we bought it. Sooner or later we will embrace many more trends and most of its credit should go to how these are marketed to us, the consumers. If you so wish to you can read up on 10 Trends in Social Media Marketing in today’s age, and how companies are constantly evolving marketing strategies to stay ahead of their competition.
The basic difference between Bangladesh and other Asian giants like India, China and Japan is that Bangladesh is still in a middle ground between embracing the trend and trying to adopt the trend, whereas these nations are the early adopters. Day by day, through the massive enhancement of communication technology our young generation are becoming well aware of the newer marketing trends all around the globe. The first thing that should knock your frontal lobe after reading this is the e-commerce boom. After Amazon opted to enter the Bangladeshi market, there is no doubt that a huge number of the younger generation has accepted e-commerce, although late, but greater in volume. The next in line is a cashless society and you can feel it around. Within a span of a year, we’ve started to pay for our groceries via QR code scan instead of using credit or debit cards. That’s the concept of cashless society, “One smartphone to rule them all.”
Meanwhile, digital marketing has flew in and knocked off the traditional marketing system. But the formula remained the same, ‘Grab most of your customer’s attention’. Unfortunately the Gen X in Bangladesh could not accept it as spontaneously as their successors. Why? Because of their lack of technological knowledge – and a significant apathy towards change has still gotten them stuck into the same mantra: check, negotiate and buy. Well rest assured, you can never make them buy your Qurbani cow from online. But this generation still holds a significant slice of share in the market. On the other hand countries like India, China and Japan where both the Gen X and the Millennials are better equipped with technological knowledge could embrace these changes we earlier than we could. So the greatest dilemma for the organization these days is, where to give more emphasis? The growing Facebook generation or the already existing classic customers.
But saying that our very own marketers are just sitting idle and going with the global flow, will be a huge misjudgment on them. The new concept of cause driven marketing is blowing the mind of the general consumers and a 100% thumbs up should go to the people sitting in the cubicles of various marketing agencies for their brilliant campaigns. Now a days, people are well aware about the mumbo jumbo promises of the brands and tired of hearing them to be quite frank. They want to hear something new, the little extra that you do as a brand to get out of that ordinary zone, the ‘why you do what you do’ thing. Companies are now thinking of long term brand equity than short term revenue generation. Kudos to the younger generation who no more trusts a brand because others are doing so.
Not only the FMCG, Food or Fashion industry, our film industry has gotten a fantastic turnaround from the absolute distress that we tolerated for more than a decade. Thus promotional techniques are getting more trendy than any time before. How many times you saw the lead actors in a film are actually reading news in a national television or standing in the ticket counters to sell their very own movie tickets? Well, you certainly saw them few days back. And we can be sure many more is yet to come. Still we have a lot to think of before implementing the art of guerrilla marketing, looking into Grassroots Advertising for Street Teams right here, growth hacking or content marketing. Is the target group ready to accept? Well, we are not far behind. So the challenge for the brands now days are very significant. Do you follow the eclectic marketing trends all guns blazing or you play a balancing game?
When implemented correctly, the content marketing strategy can be quite effective. And for that reason, many businesses tend to use b2b saas inbound marketing to raise awareness and establish trust with potential customers. This can include fashion blogs, case studies, white papers, video production, and many other things. Inbound marketing outperforms outbound marketing, where your audience is sent content they might want because the tailored element of inbound marketing can solve problems that they have right now. So, if you had to choose between inbound and outbound marketing, inbound would be a better investment in terms of ROI.
The bottom line is, as a nation we are very much fond of newer trends but too cautious to embrace them quickly. We didn’t buy bitcoins, we bought ride sharing, lately but significantly.
Written By Farhan Fuad
