2021 was a year for fundamentals. After the disruption of 2020, where businesses had to pivot and adapt to a ‘new normal’, 2021 was a year to sure up some of the quick fixes and look for strategies for sustainable growth. These are the top articles on the Aquitude website last year…
#B2B Ecommerce is still catching up to its potential. The pandemic has accelerated the pace of change, but there is still work to do to fundamentally change commerce culturally in certain sectors. Cross-border payments and financing is more complicated than B2C ecommerce and supply chain issues have impeded growth too.
Disruption is often attributed to technology, but in fact, it is the companies that create an experience that allows mass adoption of a technology that is often where the real growth comes from – Apple didn’t invent the phone, but they made it more intuitive to use. Neo-banks are disrupting finance through frictionless onboarding and the opportunities for making blockchain technologies simpler to use will unlock the next wave of users.
3. How to Calculate Customer Lifetime Value
One of the most underused metrics for long term, sustainable growth. This is not about a one time like or a single purchase at a discount. This is about building loyalty with customers directly rather than through intermediaries like Amazon or Facebook.
Another B2B ecommerce article that attracted a lot of attention in 2021. Understanding that the buyer is changing. That B2B buyers expect a B2C experience – from UX to support, from transparent market knowledge of pricing to a shift of power between digitally savvy and not.
5. Outsourced Chief Marketing Officer
Marketing technology is not going away… It fact, it is about to get a whole lot more complicated and you may need a CMTO to help you put all of the pieces together.
Predictions
Many of these topics and articles are backwards looking. The opportunities for growth provided by disruptive technologies like blockchain are just bubbling up into the mainstream, and that’s where we expect the interest to be in 2022.