How can trend research help you stand out in a crowded market?

Furthermore, blindly adhering to trends may result in tactics that are too narrow-minded. The danger of ignoring digital trends was demonstrated by Blockbuster's demise and Netflix's ascent. However, not every fad ensures success—do you remember Google Glass? Determining which trends fit with your long-term goals and core values is crucial.

- Identify unmet needs: you can uncover unaddressed customer desires and pain points to stand out from competitors who are stuck in the status quo. -Tailor your message: you get insights into how target audiences think and communicate and can use this knowledge to craft messaging that resonates, connects, and sets you apart. - Be an early adopter: anticipating rising trends allows you to be a first mover and establish yourself as a thought leader. This positions you advantageously and attracts customers seeking the latest and greatest.

Trends are important to build topical authority around. For the moment it's what everyone's talking about and so their mind craves a unique perspective to make sense out of it all. You can establish yourself as a topical authority if you can follow the trends your target audience cares about and have an insightful take. The more coverage and depth, the better your overall brand will be perceived in the eyes of your buyer

1. Look for major mergers and acquisitions or financing rounds in the space. There's usually a story around what happened. You can hit up your network to get their perspective and round out the picture of what's going on. Know who your competitors and ecosystem players are and have a pulse on what's going on around them. I find that for sales/marketing tech Michael Levy's newsletter is well researched and insightful. 2. Curate your LinkedIn or social feed to be following the top voices in the space. Everyone knows who the main industry players. Follow along. Engage with the posts you find insightful and you'll naturally get shown more from those individuals. Read the comments, especially the controversial ones to spot knowledge gaps.

Besides research trends and customer insights/behaviors, we must also consider its impact and assess risk. By saying that, we need to examine potential opportunities and threats. - Determine the level of risk associated with each trend, considering factors such as market competition, regulatory changes, and consumer preferences. - Develop strategies to capitalize on favorable trends while mitigating risks associated with unfavorable ones. This may involve adjusting product offerings, marketing tactics, pricing strategies, or operational processes. - Continuously monitor trends and reassess their impact on your business. Adapt your strategies as needed to stay competitive.

Talk to industry experts, competitors, investors, people who worked at the companies in question. You want to get as close to the truth as possible, and then synthesize it all together to form the bigger picture. The closer to the truth your primary research the stronger your truth blocks that you're building for your main analysis. It's not just analysis, you want to be right on your calls because this process of being right compounds over time and that's what people follow.

Once you have a good analysis on the trend, you can post your take across social or whichever medium your audience consumes content from. At Warmly we're big on posting across LinkedIn and using video to illustrate points. We'll also clip the videos and post short form videos across tiktok, youtube, and instagram. We'll write long-form blog articles that get picked up by SEO. And we'll include the links and snippets in our newsletter to prospects and subscribers. A single piece of analysis repurposed across channels to our addressable market.

Follow the top voices on social to keep up with trends. Curate your feed from LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram, etc. to make sure you're at least keeping up with what's hot. To form your own opinion and be contrarian you'll need to be closer to the truth (e.g. customers). It'll require you to be a practitioner with a science lab to be able to test the market. What you see on social is the trend, what you test and validate in the market that deviates from the trend is where you'll be ahead of the curve.

There are three principles to keeping up with trends. The first is curiosity. You must foster your curiosity not just for the problem you are immediately solving but for the entire ecosystem to which your audience belongs. The second is to get obsessed with understanding where your audience spends their attention. Understand how they gather information and make decisions. And lastly, contribute to those channels - it’s not enough just to be a passive reader; engage and write your own content. The act of writing will force you to synthesize your knowledge of trends, and the feedback you get from the market will tell you if your assumptions are correct.

Boiling hot take: Ignore trends. Focus instead on the things that won't change. But don't listen to me. Listen to Jeff Bezos... “I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's *not* going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now."

It is better to understand what causes the trend and the leading factor to the trend. If the leading factor is determined then you can know if the trend analysis can help you in the market after performing other necessary analysis like market trend and social media trend. Bubbleshot trend analysis will allow you when upscaling market performance is about taking reversal course because it will help you to know if you are at the peak of trend movement in order to introduce new strategy to keep the trend pushing upward and driving traction for products.