Daily there are more brands/companies (your current suppliers and employees) electing to go where they never went before which is to build a direct relationship with 'your' customer' and look to cut you out.

And the rocket fuel that's helping them get there is the prolific use of social media to help educate, inform, listen, learn, and most likely transact.

Social commerce doesn't require a consumer to be 'driven' to your website, it doesn't require a consumer to spend an age going through your funnel today, that was yesterday!!

The reality is you could be buying your next car from social platforms like 'TikTok', Instagram, Weibo, WeChat, Alibaba or others that are constantly evolving the commerce landscape.

Change in behaviour is a constant thing and as a business transformation and growth practitioner the first place I start when asked to review a company and its opportunities is to get the leadership team to answer the following 2 questions;

1. Why do you think people previously shopped with you?
2. Why do you think less people are shopping with you now?

What seem like innocuous questions regularly create division and confusion amongst leadership teams. 

A recent Forrester report titled ‘The Cost of Losing Creativity’ — a survey of 100,000 customers and 300 major brands — stated “customer experience has become homogenised, technology is now table stakes as customers can no longer distinguish one experience from another.

Every CMO at every company feels mounting pressure to differentiate their brand now that their go-to playbook for performance has run its course.

In my experience by tracking early signs in changing behaviour with your consumers will give you insights into future disruption in your business. 

Which is why most companies before, during, and probably post this crisis will revert back to what they did before with marketing and paid media advertising and still think that the consumer can't wait for their next shiny intrusive advert!!.