BUSINESS TRENDS WE EXPECT TO SEE EVERY YEAR

It is set to be a good year for business.

According to forecasts by The World Bank, this year will see global economic growth hit 3.1 percent following a surprising year of stronger-than-expected recovery in trade, manufacturing and investment in 2017. In particular, growth in the emerging market and developing economies is expected to strengthen to 4.5 percent in the coming 12 months – and these patterns of strong business growth will, apparently, be replicated worldwide.

And the ways in which businesses will grow are surprising.

While in recent years growth hack techniques were fairly straightforward to business owners… we’re talking creative marketing, market survey incentives, double-edged referral schemes and perhaps the introduction of CSR initiatives… in 2018 things will become a little more complex.

In the marketing space, consumers will see more personalization of marketing than ever before in 2018. A strategy by which companies leverage data analysis to customize product offerings to potential customers, personalised marketing rejects generic campaigns or impersonal calls to action, instead focusing on targeting potential high-value sales. Remember the last time you opened Facebook and eerily noted that flights to Barbados – the exact destination you were researching late last night – were being advertised by Facebook? This is a fantastic example of personalized marketing. Yes, it may be somewhat disconcerting that your every move is being closely watched, but it’s best you get on board with the idea if you have a product you want to sell. By 2018, companies that have invested in all types of personalization will outsell companies that have not, by almost 20 percent.

Oh, and those stunning models flaunting Gucci on their Amalfi Coast Instagram account? Those ‘micro-influencers’ (audiences of 1,000 to 100,000) will become four times as likely as ‘macro-influencers’ (typically 10 million plus followers) to attract comments on a post from their followers, making them an invaluable tool for digital marketing schemes. According to Huffington Post, a staggering 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations by micro-influencers and only 33 percent trust ads. So quick, find yourself an insta-model!

Live interactions over social media will similarly become a favoured social marketing tool, with smart companies realizing that since consumers are already connected in the virtual world, such relationships can be strengthened by virtual ‘face-to-face’ meetings to increase engagement. Sell-out events will be broadcast via Facebook and Instagram, live interviews will be fed through to followers, Q&A sessions with makers, employers and CEOs will be streamed live and even a behind-the-scenes look at a company’s headquarters will attract viewers in the year to come.

We will also see the rise of the sharing or “collaborative economy” – and of social enterprise – as trust and familiarity with such models continues to grow among consumers.

Uber, Grab and Airbnb will soon be just some of the many sharing companies taking a bigger slice of the economic pie than ever before, with new research by Juniper estimating that the sharing economy will reach $40.2 billion in 2022, up from $18.6 billion in 2017. The collaborative economy already has, and will continue to disrupt traditional retail, automative and server industries, though trust will remain a major barrier to widespread adoption of the sharing economy particularly when it comes to accommodation services. According to an April 2017 report, 31 percent of US consumers still do not consider home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb as safe.

As for the growth of social enterprise, it was predicted back in 2012 that social entrepreneurship would secure a future in capitalism, but we will only truly begin to see how this plays out in 2018. Defined broadly as any kind of organisation or initiative that has a particularly social, environmental or community objective, social entrepreneurship could provide innovative solutions to our worsening environmental crises and social problems – and could help the plight of those in developing countries in particular . It might come as a surprise that Sub-Saharan African has one of the highest social entrepreneurial activities in the world, representing 9 percent of the economy, followed by Southeast Asia with 3.8 percent, with both lower than the United States and Australia at 11 percent. Will capitalism be given the social conscience that could ensure its longevity in 2018? Let’s wait and see.

And, while it may have been okay to ‘make do’ with a freelance or external IT service team last year, this year however, a greater investment in expert IT services will be absolutely essential if one wishes their company to survive and thrive. Enterprises will, according to vice president of Infoblox Prakash Nagpal, begin to invest in dedicated security operations centers rather than rely merely on anti-virus software and forming reactive responses to cyberattacks. “Hybrid security offerings combining on-premise and SaaS/Cloud solutions will become the dominant architecture with customers beginning to integrate these offerings starting in 2018”, Nagpal said.

There are a whole host of other predictions for the business world in 2018, including the emergence of AI as a critical marketing tool, the widespread acceptance of cyptocurrency as a valid form of accepted payment and an increase in anti-harrassment policies in the workplace, to name a few. Business will evolve in new and wonderful ways. Watch this space.