Types of Market Trends: An Industry Trends Analysis

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!