Consumer behaviour has become more unpredictable with the rise of hybrid work and global instability making everyday life more erratic.
Research shows a disconnect between what consumers say they value from companies and what companies appear to be investing in.
With 64% of consumers wishing companies would respond faster to meet their changing needs.
And 88% of executives thinking their customers are changing faster than their businesses can keep up.
As a consequence, marketing needs to abandon the idea of one-size-fits-all products or services and focus on niche targeting.
Dr. Edwin Van der Ouderaa, senior managing director global lead customer, sales and service practice at Accenture, told AdNews, the delivery of communication and advertising needs to change from personalisation to personal conversations to stay relevant.
Where personalisation would group individuals into a 20-30 segment, personal conversations look at consumers one-by-one with an individualised profile through a collection of first-party data.
However, as marketing needs to be more specific to every single consumer the scale of work can become impossible for agencies to juggle multiple brand audiences.
“You can see that everything becomes data driven - both in the analysis of the situation and understanding of who our clients are in a multifaceted way,” Van der Ouderaa said.
“Of course for smaller agencies that's not so easy.
"I wouldn't be surprised if a number of smaller agencies go more niche in their communications and products, so they can excel within that specific.
"I think small agencies need to redirect their talents to that niche rather than the broader markets, because they will not be able to deliver.
"It's the bigger agencies that can build the infrastructure, or that can work with the infrastructure of the client and can go deeper across the whole spectrum.
“Omni channel becomes really important, that's how agencies need to think about it, marketing is not just about a great ad on television, or a great billboard.
“They need to design all aspects of communication in a way where they can work across all of those different channels.”
So, are agencies already reshaping to be more niche?
AdNews asked off-record and found no noticeable trend as such. However, some agencies are finding it easier to morph from generalists to specialists due to the fast pace of technological advancements.
James Richardson, co-founder at Optimising, said: “The wave of clients searching for full service agencies is shifting.
“Clients, who are determined to work smarter, are seeing the benefits of using experts in their field, rather than someone who knows how to play every instrument.
“Of course there are still some clients who want a one stop shop - but many don’t.
“At Optimising, we know teams can better challenge each other if they are all working towards the same goal and have complementary skills in the same space.
“In our case, we have shifted from working across a range of digital offerings, like paid search ads and web development, to focus solely on SEO. Search is only becoming more complex, and by channelling our efforts into SEO, we can ensure our team is focussed, and are having robust conversations and problem solving sessions to get the best outcomes for our clients.
“For our clients, who are laser focussed on results, it leads to better outcomes. Clients come to us at all different stages of their lifecycle, from SaaS startups to big brand names who have found themselves in the Google ‘sin bin’ looking for solutions.
“In the end it was an easy decision for us - and it’s been energising for our team, produced positive results for our clients and the agency has grown because of it.
“By drilling down and being the best at what you do, which in our case is SEO, it means we can provide the best solutions and better effectiveness for clients.”
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