– Customers have really not been loyal in the last three years. This is the biggest problem for companies that have brands. User experience will be the most serious topic in the next three years – said Kristijan Gregorić, director and partner at Valicon, during yesterday’s Lider conference Marketing and Sales by Numbers, in the green surroundings of the Zagreb restaurant and park Maksimir.
Since Valicon conducts numerous studies predicting customer behavior, Gregorić knows that customers today primarily look at – price.
– Everyone looks at price and that is an important factor that we all need to keep in mind. After that, health will be one of the most important and relevant topics. Sustainability is also emerging, something that has long been a topic abroad. Some new generations Alpha and Z strongly associate sustainability with loyalty, meaning they are loyal just because you are sustainable – explained the new trends Gregorić.
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Valicon’s research showed that as much as 95 percent of loyalty members, or loyalty clubs, spend more annually than non-members, which is good. On the other hand, Gregorić noted, the situation is very bad because this ecosystem is disconnected.
– The shortcomings are poor data usage, complex oversight, lack of differentiation, time lag from redemption, and lack of personalization – says Gregorić.
A study conducted at INA showed that customers do not fully understand all the benefits offered to them through the loyalty program, said Ivana Herceg Batić, director of Retail Marketing and Loyalty Programs at INA.
– Education, as well as consumer personalization, is currently our focus and that is something we are starting to work on more strongly – added Herceg Batić, agreeing that price is very important to customers today.
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Ivana Les, marketing director at ZooCity, noted that, given inflation and recession, they are trying to mitigate the financial impact on their customers.
– There is always a part of customers in every retail sector who look exclusively at price. In that case, we intensified promotional benefits – said Les.
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Gregorić emphasized that Croatia is not lagging behind the West in loyalty; however, we are not particularly good at connecting all channels.
– In the next five years, consumers will not only look at money but will also look for what they need to be available across all channels – concluded Gregorić.
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Currently, the Greatest Success is in Short Forms
The conclusion of the Lider conference was marked by the panel ‘If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth?’ where Dominik Beber, editor-in-chief of JoomBoos, Ena Rajić, spoken word poet, satirist, and entrepreneur, and Marko Janković, director of the agency Jedinica, spoke.
Ena Rajić pointed out at the panel that it is easy to attract a client’s attention today, but the real question is how to keep it. She said that one should touch on topics that others do not address or those that others have abandoned, and one should position themselves as an authority in that way to gain the trust and attention of viewers and potential clients.
Dominik Beber stated that TikTok has significantly changed user habits, which ultimately affected the media, creators, and everything else, adding that regardless of whether you are a media or some other brand, you need to know where the audience is and you need to follow them, and today the audience is precisely on TikTok.
– Currently, the greatest success is happening in short forms, while a few years ago success was, for example, the production of a web series for YouTube – he explained, adding that success is a subjective concept, but ultimately the only metric that remains the most important is actually the time users spend ‘with you, with your content’.
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Beber also stated that all trends show that short-form video will remain while long-form moves to other streaming platforms, explaining that the audience’s attention span is decreasing day by day, now at five seconds or even less.
– No one could predict TikTok and we do not know what will happen next, but according to some data we have, short form will continue – concluded the editor-in-chief of JoomBoos.
Marko Janković said that marketing always goes where the audience is, telling a packed hall that brands must think about how to stand out, and social networks enable ‘breaking out of the mass’ of content we are bombarded with daily.
– Brands need to adapt to influencers, this does not mean complete freedom, there should be boundaries, but, for example, if I decide to use Ena in my campaign to better position the brand, I must give her space because she knows best how to be Ena, just as JoomBoos knows best how to be JoomBoos – explained Janković.
