Predicting Future Trends

What is Trend Forecasting?

Trend forecasting is a complex but useful way to keep up with the ever changing trends. It helps with looking at past sales to gather information on what might happen in the future. This method is useful for businesses as it is typically used by marketing experts to determine potential sales growth in the coming years. Trend forecasting can also help you understand concepts to determine an effective strategy. 

As a business owner, you should train yourself and your staff to be prepared to encounter changes in trends. Being able to foresee these changes grants your business a big advantage when going towards great opportunities. It has been shown that small businesses and even startups quickly rise to become big corporations because they’ve mastered the method of trend forecasting. 

A Deeper Look

When you’re looking into your business’ numbers, a “constant trend” would mean there is no net increase or decrease in sales over time. Changes might be seasonal, meaning there’s an occasional increase and decrease, but the average stays all the same. For example, during the summer sales increased but it immediately decreased in the fall, but the annual average is the same - that is a constant trend or pattern. 

A linear trend or pattern means a steady increase or decrease over time. When you put this kind of pattern in a graph, it would show a straight diagonal line going down or up. 

An exponential trend or pattern is similar to a linear pattern, but instead of a straight line, it’s a curved line going upwards or downwards. This kind of pattern reveals that sales might have been very slow, but has been slowly gaining popularity over time.

How to Apply Trend Forecasting to your Business

To know the future, you also need to know the past. Trends also work like a butterfly effect - one trend leads to another. A great example of a product of the “trend butterfly effect” would be TikTok. Before TikTok, there was Vine, a social media platform that was popular around 2013. It was an application where you can post 6 second videos, and it was popular because many creators found creative ways to put out interesting short clips. Unfortunately Vine was discontinued in 2016. Around the same time, TikTok was released, and it essentially followed the same formula - it was a platform to post short clips. It quickly became a hit and is now one of the most used social media platforms of 2022. 

When trending things disappear, they’re actually not gone forever - they trend for a reason. This is where trend forecasting kicks in. Forecasters can formulate a graph based on past information and/or sales, and they can then make a “formula” to translate patterns in that graph to predict what happens in the future. There are also trend forecasting software that can aid with this method.

Research and analysis is also very useful in trend forecasting. Forecasters keep track of special events and trends and analyze them to prepare for any change that might happen. Also researching the right software and even hardware can get the job done.

The internet is a powerful tool. Simply looking up forums, like Reddit for example, can help you figure out what interests people the most. When you find out what kind of things people like, it can aid you in keeping that trend going in your favor.

Conducting surveys is always a good idea to directly find out what people like. This can help you easily find out and understand the problems people have, and you will be the first to fix it. If you don’t, someone else will take that chance, and they’ll be the ones who will benefit from that information.

Always be ready to adapt to new technology. With the current society we are living in, things change fast - especially technology. Each year, multiple models of gadgets come out with new innovative features. With this, your business and staff should be prepared to be flexible and adaptable because new technologies start the ripple effect of new trends.

Business Growth 

In a nutshell, success comes to those businesses who can effectively predict trends. If you want to stay relevant in the market, you should learn to “go with the flow”. The needs of consumers change fast as time passes, and if you don’t adjust to that, you can’t expect to stay in business. 

Although trend forecasting is an effective strategy for your business growth, still be cautious. Unexpected events may still happen even though you have mastered trend forecasting, like stock market changes or sudden change in consumer behavior. Trend patterns are not objective, as it can become more complicated than just lines or curves on a graph. With this, it is important to keep an open mind and never stay stationary.