Quality offer of products or services: check. Bullet-proof business plan: check. Solid market strategy: check. But how about your brand identity, is it by the book? Are all requirements met to persuade your potential customers that you’re the partner they’re looking for? Is your brand convincing and visually captivating?

You’re 100% behind your organization’s offer, which contains life-changing products, but you see the development of your brand identity as a side issue? Time to change that vision, and to pursue a brand identity that fully covers the added value your company and products have to offer.

Short-form video is one of the key marketing trends to watch in 2021, according to the experts at HubSpot1. Driven by the popularity of platforms like TikTok and Reels on Instagram, short-form video is taking over the online landscape. What’s considered short-form? Anything less than two and a half minutes, with the length varying by platform: 15 seconds is the length of videos on Instagram Reels, up to 60 seconds on TikTok, and up to two minutes and 20 seconds on Twitter. (YouTube is still the platform of choice for longer video; two minutes is a recommended length here, but educational or instructional videos that are longer than that are ok too2.

The pandemic is significantly changing the landscape for in-person conferences, congresses and trade shows. Most professional conference organizers are postponing their events to next year, with any paid registrants switched to the future event. In the meantime, we are all missing opportunities to meet with our customers and prospects.

In 2020, most B2B marketers had to switch gears and completely re-invent their marketing plans, shifting the focus to supporting their customers in a time of need and moving in-person initiatives to virtual. Now, almost a year into the pandemic, we’re realizing that a lot of the changes wrought by Covid may be more permanent, both from a marketing and a personal perspective. The experts at HubSpot have put together a report on the key trends that will shape marketing in 2021. It’s no surprise that most of them are driven by the pandemic, but the good news is that in 2021 marketing will be able to move on from the ‘panic pivot’ of last year to more thoughtful and strategic marketing approaches that reflect our changed world, and the altered needs of our audiences.

The concept of branding started with our ancestors "branding" cattle so they could easily pick their own animals from a larger herd. Today, a "brand" stands for much more than the mere identification of a product. With a good brand, you can create an emotional bond between your product and your customer.

In GDPR times, it’s more challenging to build mailing lists. These regulations stipulate, among other things, that contact persons must actively agree to be contacted. You can’t simply e-mail to purchased address lists, or to contact lists of professional associations. Yet email marketing remains a strong means of staying top-of-mind with your target audiences.

Today, many companies are engaged in sustainable production and business practices. In an ecologically-aware society, it’s important to give your branding a green boost. But how can you communicate about sustainability without resorting to clichés?

Hospitals are scaling up to more COVID-19 capacity at the expense of non-COVID-linked activities. Many clinicians will be forced to reschedule their activities from home in anticipation of the decline in Corona numbers. As a healthcare vendor, how do you learn to surf the waves of these (and coming) pandemics?