November 4, 2020 •DJ Team
A market trend is anything that alters the market your company operates in. This could be something as far-reaching as artificial intelligence technology, as fickle as consumer preferences, or as industry-specific as new regulations. In fact, it’s almost certain there are multiple market trends affecting your business at the same time, right now. Why is it important to keep up to date with industry trends and developments? Well, because that’s how you grow and stay ahead of your competition. As author and motivational speaker John Maxwell once said, “Change is inevitable, but growth is optional.” While you can’t stop the momentum of change like technology or regulations, you can take steps to grow in tandem with those changes.
This trend-tracking doesn’t have to add up to hours of research every week. By understanding the types of market trends, you can distinguish what makes sense for your business. This focused analysis helps you adapt and stay competitive in any rapidly changing business environment.
What is an Example of a Market Trend?
If you try a simple Google search for “market trends,” you’re likely to get a lot of information about stocks, financials, and investing. Today this term applies to many industries, but it does have its roots in finance. And though your industry of operation might be B2B services, retail, energy, technology, healthcare, or many other sectors of the economy, you can still learn from the three ways financial professionals think about a market trend.
1. Short-Term Market Trends
Short-term trends occur over a few hours or days. In marketing or business positioning, this would include news and current events, social media trends, or sales events like Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday. For example, if a news story breaks that is relevant to your business, you need to create content about that quickly to capture interest before it ebbs away.
2. Intermediate Market Trends
Intermediate trends last anywhere from two to eight weeks. In finance, these are rallies and turnarounds that can mystify analysts. In business, causes of intermediate trends can be easier to pinpoint, but not always. Events like the holiday season, elections, tax time, or industry-specific compliance deadlines represent some factors that can drive intermediate market trends. Maybe your competitors do something every year to mark some of these occasions, or your customers are looking for unique products or services for a few months. Other times, social media influencers or emerging research drives these trends in interest.
3. Long-Term Market Trends
Long-term trends last years and even decades. These are big societal changes that affect your business, like mobile devices and artificial intelligence, gaps or deficiencies in the talent pipeline, the COVID-19 pandemic, and culture shifts like the #metoo movement or demands for racial equity and justice . While you might need to adapt to the new environment as these long-term trends manifest, responses should be more thoughtful than reactionary. For instance, just because you know consumers want a mobile-friendly experience doesn’t mean you should implement one without strategy.
What Are Some Important Trends in Marketing?
Let’s explore two real-world recent trends in marketing with examples to further illustrate the point.
- Short and Sweet Video Marketing: While video watching hit an all-time high in 2020, forecasts estimate that adults will spend approximately 80 minutes per day watching digital videos on mobile devices by 2023. One of the best ways to get them to watch and engage with your videos is by keeping them short. Reddit took this to an extreme during the 2021 Super Bowl, buying a five-second commercial slot as a part of a brand awareness campaign. It worked, and the Tweet linked to the video has racked up over 464,000 views.
- Pillar-Based Marketing: Content still remains one of the most effective ways to get your audience’s attention. Pillar-based marketing is a strategy that builds authority, pushing your content further up the rankings on search engine results pages. Sharing our own win with pillar-based marketing, we published six pieces of content per week for three weeks around the topic of SEO Keyword Research. The results? We went from 10 to 59 first page rankings.
How to Determine Market Trends You Should Focus On
There are lots of trends that matter to different consumers at different times. But if your business tries to be everything to everyone, your message won’t speak to your ideal customer over all the others. Focusing on short-term market trends might be one way to make customers aware of you through social media or Google results, but it’s how you speak to long-term trends and show your value that will take them from casual reader to dedicated customer.
There are a few ways you can find out about the market trends affecting your business. As you explore these trends, it’s also important to be asking critical questions about how your values and service offerings align, fit in, or even run counter to the trends.
Follow Types of Recent Trends in Marketing
One way to hone in on market trends unique to your industry is to read the publications that are reporting on the current issues. For example, if you’re looking to stay up to date with recent trends in content marketing, you might follow Search Engine Journal or Search Engine Land. If possible, sign up for newsletters to receive articles and insights right to your inbox. If podcasts are more your thing, our own Page One or Bust talks SEO strategy with business leaders and SEO experts alike.
Use Industry Trends Analytics
Digital analytics tools, like those we offer at DemandJump, for consumer behavior insights can help you get the bigger picture on your market, your audience, what they are searching for, and how it relates to the greater economy.
Observe Your Competitors
If all your competitors are doing something, does that mean you should do it? Maybe yes, or maybe no. But observing their marketing is a way to make more educated decisions.
But don’t forget, it’s not just about what your brand considers important. The whole reason for focusing on trends to begin with is to appeal better to your customers. Your trends analysis should also be paired with market research to inform your messaging strategy and content creation plan. With DemandJump, customers can dive into the exact keywords and phrases their competitors are ranking for—giving them the knowledge they need to take over the market share.
What are the 3 Main Types of Market Research?
Following along with trends just because they exist is never a great idea. To make sure your choices will result in more business and more customer loyalty, you can’t skip market research. This process will help you understand the problems customers are facing, and refine the way you present your solutions.
There are three main types of market research:
- Exploratory Research: This approach is used to better-define a problem and your organization's opportunity to solve it. This research is usually conducted through in-depth customer interviews or discussions.
- Descriptive Research: This approach is used to determine if a product or service is a good fit for the market, or to judge the general attitudes of customers toward a service or product. In addition to interviews, surveys may also be used.
- Causal Research: This market research is used to test scenarios or determine cause-and-effect. This might be conducted through focus groups or A-B testing to see if changing one aspect of the pitch or marketing strategy changes the outcome with customers.
These market research tactics will help you understand what customers are looking for and what elements motivate them toward a buying decision. How do their questions change along with their needs? What solutions are they seeking? With these answers, you will be able to put current market trends in the context of your business and your market.
What Are the Advantages of Trend Analysis?
There are several advantages of conducting market trend analysis, including establishing better relationships with customers and driving your business’s sales. Let’s dive into each of these as well as some of the other benefits.
- Building Better Relationships With Customers: When you know who your customers are and what they are searching for, you can create a marketing plan that will better attract them and keep them once they are customers.
- Creating Competition: You want to keep up with the competition, and analyzing marketing trends allows you to do so. What is your competition doing well? What could they be doing better? Look at those areas and determine what your business can do to remain competitive.
- Supporting Business Growth: When you look at marketing trends, you can determine where your business can develop new products and services to attract new customers.
- Identifying Areas for Improvement: What could your business do better? Look at marketing trends to determine what those areas might be and improve upon them.
- Avoiding Crises: The unexpected happens all the time. When you look at marketing trends, you can start to predict what might cause problems for your business before you actually face those problems.
- Driving Sales: Ultimately, all of these points lead to one big benefit for your business: an increase in sales. Once you figure out what your customers want and how to give it to them, then hopefully you can improve the financial well-being of your business via increased sales.
Get On-Demand Industry Trends Analysis With DemandJump
We created DemandJump to help marketers get insights and drive outcomes faster and more efficiently. DemandJump doesn’t just track search trends and consumer behavior in real-time, but also draws in insights from competitors to help you see how they are reacting to trends.
With the insights provided by DemandJump, market trends will already be put in the context of your target customer’s experience, so you can skip many of these steps and get focused on the work of improving your business. Get started today!
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FAQs
What are the types of market trends? ›
There are three main types of trends: short-, intermediate- and long-term. A trend is a general direction the market is taking during a specified period of time. Trends can be both upward and downward, relating to bullish and bearish markets, respectively.
What is a market trend analysis? ›Market trend analysis needn't be as scary as it sounds. It's simply the comparison of industry data over a set time period, designed to recognise any consistent trends or results that could be used to map your business strategy – aligning it with the general direction of your industry.
How do you write a market trend analysis? ›- Determine your purpose. ...
- Research the state of the industry. ...
- Identify your target customer. ...
- Understand your competition. ...
- Gather additional data. ...
- Analyze your data. ...
- Put your analysis to work.
Industry trends are patterns or trends that occur within a specific industry. These trends may relate to price, cost, consumer purchasing, marketing, manufacturing, sales methodology or any number of other areas.
What are the 3 types of market trends? ›Simply put, short-, intermediate- and long-term trends are the three kinds of trends that we see each day in our study of technical analysis.
What are the 5 types of trends? ›- Uptrend.
- Downtrend.
- Sideways trend.
Fast forward 20 years and the streets are dominated by cell phones. A couple years later, the smartphone takes over. Take a look around you today, there are smartphones, tablets, and even watches that allow you to make phone calls. This change in the communication market is an excellent example of a market trend.
What is an example of trend analysis? ›Examples of Trend Analysis
Examining sales patterns to see if sales are declining because of specific customers or products or sales regions; Examining expenses report claims for proof of fraudulent claims. Examining expense line items to find out if there are any unusual expenditures in a reporting period.
Trend analysis methods help analysts and the management to understand the short-term liquidity position of the company. It is also an ideal tool to measure the long-term solvency position of a firm over the years by using related financial trend ratios.
What are the 4 types of market analysis? ›Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.
Why is market analysis so important? ›
It can help you decide whether a new idea for a business or product will fly – that is, if customers will find it appealing – based on how similar products have performed in the marketplace. It can help you make wise product packaging and promotional decisions, as well as effective marketing messages.
What do you write in an industry analysis? ›To write an industry analysis report, start with a broad description of the industry, including details of its size, products, and geographic scope. Then, provide a market analysis, indicating expected growth, trends in products and technology, and other influencing factors.
What are the market trends 2022? ›In 2022, influencer marketing is set to become a common marketing tactic. Our Report found 38% of respondents are increasing their online influencer engagement in the future. Above all, your business' aims will drive your approach to influencer marketing.
How do you write an industry analysis for a business plan? ›- Step 1: Give a brief overview of the industry. ...
- Step 2: Review trends and growth patterns that have existed within the industry.
- Step 3: Identify factors that influence the industry. ...
- Step 4: Using data gathered through research, the industry forecast anticipated growth.
A trend is the general direction of the price of a market, asset, or metric. Uptrends are marked by rising data points, such as higher swing highs and higher swing lows. Downtrends are marked by falling data points, such as lower swing lows and lower swing highs.
What are the 4 major market forces? ›These factors are government, international transactions, speculation and expectation, and supply and demand.
What are the basic types of trends? ›The three basic types of trends are up, down, and sideways. An uptrend is marked by an overall increase in price. Nothing moves straight up for long, so there will always be oscillations, but the overall direction needs to be higher.
What is market size and trends? ›Market trends are the upward or downward movement of a market, during a period of time. The market size is more difficult to estimate if one is starting with something completely new. In this case, you will have to derive the figures from the number of potential customers, or customer segments.
How many trends are there in stock market? ›There are three main types of share market trends: short-term, intermediate-term and long-term. You can also classify trends as uptrend, downtrend or sideways trend.
What is meant by a trend? ›1. : a general direction of change : a way of behaving, proceeding, etc., that is developing and becoming more common. the downward/upward trend of the stock market. Digital technology is the latest/current trend in television. Teachers are trying to reverse the general trend [=tendency] of lower test scores.
How do you keep up with industry trends? ›
- Read voraciously. Read all you can about your industry, your market and the world in general. ...
- Get involved in your industry. ...
- Network. ...
- Keep in touch with your customers. ...
- Monitor your business. ...
- Study statistics. ...
- Observe your competition. ...
- Get out of the office.
- Select the base year or period. ...
- Assign a weight of 100% to the figures or amounts that appear on the base-year financial statements. ...
- Compute the trend percentage for the second year. ...
- Write your result as a percentage in the third column. ...
- Calculate the trend percentage for the third year.
Trends are an opportunity to not only connect with people in this very moment, but also an opportunity to define this moment for ourselves. Brands are afraid of any form of edginess because it borders the line of being trendy and is always a risk.
Why is trend analysis important in forecasting? ›Trend forecasting is important because it helps prevent businesses from spending resources on products that may not be successful with their target audience and instead allows them to create products that meet the desires and priorities of their customers.
What are the core objectives of industry market trend analysis? ›Trend analysis is a method to analyze the statistical data and recorded market behavior over a defined period of time and generate valuable insights using this data for strategizing and forecasting future business plans. It helps to identify the dominant traits of the market and the consumers associated with it.
What are the types of market? ›- Monopoly: A monopolistic market is a market formation with the qualities of a pure market. ...
- Oligopoly: ...
- Perfect competition: ...
- Monopolistic competition: ...
- Monopsony: ...
- Oligopsony: ...
- Natural monopoly:
- Customer decision journey.
- Pricing.
- Competitive Analysis.
- Brand awareness.
- Marketing message testing.
- Market segmentation.
- Product development.
...
Examples of primary research are:
- Interviews (telephone or face-to-face)
- Surveys (online or mail)
- Questionnaires (online or mail)
- Focus groups.
- Visits to competitors' locations.
Social trends affect startup businesses in three primary ways: how they build relationships with customers, how they design products, and how they make internal decisions.
How does market analysis affect a business? ›A market analysis provides insights into potential customers and your competition. The core components of the market analysis are: Industry analysis: Assesses the general industry environment in which you compete. Target market analysis: Identifies and quantifies the customers that you will be targeting for sales.
Why is market analysis important in a business plan? ›
A market analysis is critical to a business plan. It helps you understand the buying habits of your target market. Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This may influence which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page.
What are market needs? ›What are market needs? Market needs refer to the functional needs, desires and goals of a target audience. A company may identify an area of the market with unmet needs and create a product or service that addresses them. If that audience has a large amount of need, the company may receive a significant profit.
What are the 4 types of industries? ›In economics, industries are customarily classified as primary, secondary, and tertiary; secondary industries are further classified as heavy and light.
What are the five forces of industry analysis? ›These forces include the number and power of a company's competitive rivals, potential new market entrants, suppliers, customers, and substitute products that influence a company's profitability.
What is the meaning of industry analysis? ›An industry analysis looks at how your company compares to others that are in the same niche. According to Inc., it's a tool that allows you to understand your position among your competitors. When you conduct an industry analysis, you can better plan effective strategies for your business.
What industry is most trending? ›Additive Manufacturing Advanced Analytics Advanced Robotics AI AGVs Autonomous Vehicles. Big Data Biometrics Blockchain Drones Immersive Technologies Internet of Things.
How do trends help businesses? ›Trend analysis helps you understand how your business has performed and predict where current business operations and practices will take you. Done well, it will give you ideas about how you might change things to move your business in the right direction.
What is a digital marketing trend? ›Digital marketing trends are key changes in the strategic direction of the digital marketing landscape (including the evolution of marketing techniques, consumer sentiments, and underlying technologies) that impact the way marketers should interact with their target audience.
Who is your target market example? ›A target customer is an individual that's most likely to buy your product. And it's a subset of the broader target market. For example, if your target market is female athletes between the ages of 13 to 25, a target customer could be female athletes in the specific age range of 13 to 16.
What is industry example? ›...
53 Examples of Industries.
Administrative Services | Advertising |
---|---|
Fishing | Food Manufacturing |
Forestry | Healthcare |
Heavy Industry | Hotels |
Industrial Manufacturing | Information Technology |
How do I write an industry analysis report? ›
- Conduct background research. Conduct detailed background research on your industry and competitors to understand your market. ...
- Collect your data. Collect data that helps answer questions about the market and your competitors. ...
- Analyze your data. ...
- Write your analysis. ...
- Evaluate your business.
These factors are government, international transactions, speculation and expectation, and supply and demand.
What are examples of economic trends? ›Three major economic trends are: the unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of the labor force that is not working; the consumer confidence index, which measures consumers' confidence or optimism (or pessimism) in the economy; and the gross domestic product (GDP), which is the value of goods and services ...
What is market size and trends? ›Market trends are the upward or downward movement of a market, during a period of time. The market size is more difficult to estimate if one is starting with something completely new. In this case, you will have to derive the figures from the number of potential customers, or customer segments.
Why are marketing trends important? ›Why? Because trends allow businesses to break the boundaries of the market. Trends put forward new ideas and opportunities. And trends allow brands to communicate their values in a diverse manner.
What are the 7 market forces? ›- Social Market Forces.
- Demographic Market Forces.
- Cultural Market Market Forces.
- Economic Market Forces.
- Technological Market Forces.
- Political and Legal Market Forces.
- Competitive Market Forces.
Market factors are elements of consumer behavior and economic trends that can affect a particular sales market. This can include any variables or phenomena that might impact a business' sales. These factors can be broad, such as a country's economy, or more narrow, such as the demographics of a specific location.
What are 3 market forces that impact business? ›Although a variety of market forces may need to be addressed by your organization, there are three common ones that affect businesses today: customer responsiveness, information demand and cost pressure.
How do economic trends affect business? ›Changing levels of consumer income
An increase in spending will help businesses expand, lower unemployment and improve the economy. However, if consumer incomes fall, spending is likely to decrease. This means that businesses will not perform as well, unemployment will rise and the economy will be less stable.
This report focuses on various social trends that are changing the way companies operate and conduct business, including waste reduction, a greater desire for more inclusive products, brand transparency, the move towards entrepreneurship, and an emphasis on tech-focused practices.
How do economic trends affect everyday life? ›
Economics affects our daily lives in both obvious and subtle ways. From an individual perspective, economics frames many choices we have to make about work, leisure, consumption and how much to save. Our lives are also influenced by macro-economic trends, such as inflation, interest rates and economic growth.
What is the importance of markets? ›Markets are important. They are the mechanism through which shares in companies are bought and sold, and they give businesses access to cash. Markets are critical in price formation, liquidity transformation and allowing firms to service the needs of their clients.
What is an example of trend analysis? ›Examples of Trend Analysis
Examining sales patterns to see if sales are declining because of specific customers or products or sales regions; Examining expenses report claims for proof of fraudulent claims. Examining expense line items to find out if there are any unusual expenditures in a reporting period.
- Define your target customer.
- Estimate the number of target customers.
- Determine your penetration rate.
- Calculate the potential market size: Volume and value.
- Apply the market-size data.
The definition of a trend is a general direction or something popular. An example of trend is a northern moving coastline. An example of trend is the style of bell bottom jeans. A general tendency or course of events.
How do trends affect business? ›Social trends affect startup businesses in three primary ways: how they build relationships with customers, how they design products, and how they make internal decisions.
What is the importance of trend? ›Trends are important—they're a documentation of progress and experimentation, and allow us to connect with people in this very moment. Could you imagine looking back into a trendless history? You wouldn't be able to because there would be no visible progress. We would have a lineage of sameness.