Where will my client’s mind be tomorrow, in five or 10 years? Answering this question is the great challenge that marketing leaders have to ensure the viability of the business and define what products or services are going to generate the present and the future of the company.
This is not an easy task, because with the information age the conditions for analysis changed. Historical records are no longer good predictors of what will happen in the future, people’s wishes are not limited to where they are physically, and market benchmarks no longer have geographic boundaries or are limited to one sector.
What to do in such a changing environment? The answer lies in the prospective, the science that studies the future to understand it and be able to influence it, as defined by Gastón Berger, one of its founders. Foresight, rather than anticipating the future from the past, focuses on verified possibilities.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), foresight is a “set of systematic attempts to observe in the long term the future of science, technology, the economy and society with the purpose of identifying emerging technologies. that are likely to produce the greatest economic or social benefits ”.
How to prospect? Mario Sigfrido Huertas, who develops the chair of prospective marketing at CESA and the Externado, explains that the first thing is to understand trends at a global level. “If I do not prospectively understand the mega trends, the business stops being attractive and competitive. If I am not aligned with processes, productive chains, associated with beliefs or trends, I cannot even be an option for the consumer ”, he explains.
According to the expert, the information age brings with it five mega trends that must be taken into account when building any scenario:
Globalization: the world is a click away, and practically all people, regardless of their income, have a more global reference to make their decisions.
New technologies: the use of technology is changing all businesses, from medicine with the appearance of telemedicine, to logistics, a determining factor to be able to compete.
Hypercompetence: it is no longer about competing with importing firms. Any website that offers the same in any country in the world is a competitor.
Hyper information: a patient, a client or a supplier are sometimes more informed than the one offering the product or service, a reality that changes the future of any business.
Multiculturalism: it is increasingly important to accept and be able to understand and move in cultural diversity.
Landing the mega trends to the reality of each company is not an easy task. “The prospect tells me where global demand is going to move, and that is answered by science. If I am not associated with institutes of technology and innovation, I am left with a short-term vision, ”says Huertas.
But leaders must also be willing to make strategic alliances with suppliers, clients, unions, and all those who allow us to understand what can happen in business.
Another strategy is cobranding. “Today no one can solve all the needs of a market that increasingly demands more,” says Huertas. “Being an entrepreneur is leading how I solve the needs of a market, a community or a generation,” he explains.
Additionally, it is necessary to have very efficient logistics and response capacity, because the problem is not to offer a product or service, but to satisfy a need, to create an experience.
Data mining, for its part, helps to discriminate the needs of people and organizations, understand them and know if they can be solved.
A fundamental part of the strategy is that organizations should think about creating communities as a result of an emotional connection to content in a particular context, and not as a starting point, Huertas says.
Understanding and building the future to be valid in an increasingly globalized, hyper-informed and hyper-competitive world is the great challenge of the marketing areas. Making a good prospective marketing plan is the solution.
