At HubSpot, one of our key principles is SFTC which stands for Solve For The Customer. 

Why do we believe in this?

Because we know that if you focus on your customers, your business will grow better in a much more remarkable and sustainable way.

But truly walking the talk is difficult. 

Not just satisfying but delighting customers is only possible when you have a company culture that puts the customer first through action. 

And you can't just have a department trying to push for this. A customer-first mentality needs to sit on top of the entire flywheel so that you can truly grow better. 

Such a mentality recognises that the customer experience doesn't start when a customer purchases and doesn't end when they stop buying or cancel. The customer experience starts with the customer's very first contact with you and never really ends. 

The funnel is dead. 

Say what? 

Yup, that funnel that you've been using for decades in your marketing and sales to generate traffic and then convert and close leads into customers is dead. 

Why is it dead? Because the funnel uses a linear approach and as our VP of Marketing Jon Dick says, 

"Funnels lose the energy you put into them once you reach the bottom... Funnels produce customers, but don’t consider how those customers can help you grow. And all the momentum you built acquiring that customer? Gone. Each day, each month, and each quarter, we have to start new."

In an internal meeting at HubSpot, Jon futher explained how: 

The problem with most companies is that they have built their company designed with my dad in mind and not me in mind. In a world where customers' main source of info was vendors, you thought of your business like a funnel. In a world where customer's main source of info is other customers, you think of your business like a flywheel that spins at the rate of your customer's delight. If you want to grow better in 2018, you need to match your business to the modern buyer, throw away the funnel and embrace the flywheel.

The Need for a New Growth Model

Did you know that after watching a video, 64% of viewers are more likely to make a purchase? 

No wonder then that video has become a favourite content format for consumers and professionals alike. It's much easier and more enjoyable to consume than text or some images and it certainly keeps the attention for longer (when done right). 

Read any article about 2018 trends in marketing or communications (like this one) and you'll see video in there. Video can not only help you increase awareness about your brand, but also drive a ton of conversions and leads to your business. 

Every minute, 300 hours of video are being uploaded on YouTube. With that rate, within a year video will account for 70% of all Internet traffic. 

I've long said that visual content is king, however, only a few years later I think I need to rephrase that to video content is king. 

This is a guest post by Anita Sambol from Point Visible.

These days, social media and other online mediums are main sources of information for quite a lot of people, if not all. There are plenty of blogs and websites that talk about the most random stuff you could imagine.

Despite that or maybe precisely because of that, content creation is not an easy job. Creating useful and interesting content takes a lot of time and effort, along with some creativity and imagination.

It’s true that you can talk about almost anything but that doesn’t mean every topic will reward you with the same level of engagement. The best way to ensure you’re on the right track from the start is to base all of your content-related decisions on a quality target audience analysis. That way you won’t have a mismatch between what you want to talk about and what your audience needs and wants to read, watch and consume.

All of your communication should be consumer-centered and revolve around their needs, not yours.

Just a couple of weeks left until 2017 is over. What a great year, wasn't it? 

We saw the rise of AI and live video and the slow death of ebooks and organic only on Facebook. Exciting times! 

I'm sure everyone is deep into 2018 planning so now is the time to review what's worked for you in the past year and decide what to focus on for next year and beyond. 

In your considerations, you need to think about what's happening in the marketing world and pick which trends to jump on based on your goals and priorities for the year. 

You can't always do everything so you need to be selective and choose what's going to bring you the biggest return. Technology and digital can't do anything for you unless you have a strategy and a measurement plan at hand. 

To help you plan for next year, MDG Advertising have created a very good infographic that dives into the 5 big marketing trends to watch in 2018. Take a look below: 

5 Big Marketing Trends in 2018 [Infogpraphic]