Marketing Trends That Matter for Every Business

Seems that every conversation about marketing these days somehow raises interest in “what are the big trends in marketing?” and “what’s hot in marketing?”.  While some so-called trends may be fleeting, there are a number of recent and future trends that have or will change what and how we do marketing.

Here’s a list in no particular priority or sequence of the more frequent marketing activities and trends encountered on a daily basis:

Social Media – no question that social media has a huge impact on marketing and will continue to be one of the most prevalent trends in marketing for the foreseeable future.

Marketing Automation – there is growing interest and use of marketing automation software to plan, manage, execute and track marketing campaigns in a more structured, integrated and consistent manner.

Sales 2.0 – although there are many interpretations of what Sales 2.0 means, the primary aspects of this trend are the convergence of sales, marketing and customer collaboration using internet-based technologies and tools for improved performance.

Analytics – internet-based technologies, automation systems and database capabilities have vastly improved the availability of relevant and accurate data for analysis, performance measurement and management to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing.

Metrics – there has been an explosive increase in the definition and use of standardized marketing metrics over the past several years to measure marketing performance and results in a consistent and comparable manner.

Location – while still a nascent trend and technology, location-based media and marketing to deliver relevant content specific to a user / customer / buyer’s location will become an increasingly important and effective approach for reaching target audiences.

Mobile – mobile technologies continue to play a more prevalent role in everyone’s personal and business life.  As mobile capabilities continue to improve and evolve, and usage increases, marketing must reach their target audiences through mobile technologies.

Inbound Marketing – the trend from traditional ‘push’ style outbound marketing approaches such as print advertising, direct mail, trade shows, email blasts, etc. continues to shift to more effective and measurable ‘pull’ style inbound marketing methods such as search, websites, content, social media, etc.

Content – buyers and customers want information and resources to make informed buying decisions.  Content marketing uses educational, informative and authoritative content delivered in multiple media formats such websites, newsletters, white papers, articles, videos, etc. for specific target audiences.

Search – is one of the most important tools and resources for marketers across all types of businesses.  Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has become a sophisticated marketing strategy encompassing both Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Placement methods.

Integrated Marketing – persistent campaigns and consistent messaging across multiple channels such as websites, video, online and other media advertising, content and collateral.

Adaptive Brand Marketing – the shift from traditional command-and-control and/or hub-and-spoke approaches to collaborative approaches that include new technologies and social media.  See article ‘Adaptive Brand Marketing – More Than Just Four New Ps’ for more information.

Customer Loyalty – means that a customer desires to continue doing business with a company based on their positive experience and satisfaction.  Marketing is increasingly charged with measuring and improving customer loyalty, providing loyalty programs, and driving customer-specific campaigns to get more sales from existing customers.

Psychographics – traditionally marketing primarily used demographics to define market and customer segmentation based on tangible characteristics.  The use of psychographics to define target audiences and market segments based on aspirational, opinions and value characteristics enables improved targeting and more relevant messaging.

What do you think about this list and what you’re seeing and experiencing?  Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Breathing our own exhaust?

An ex-colleague who read my recent post ‘Are you Inside-out or Outside-in?’, sent me an email about an expression I use that he really liked – “are we breathing our own exhaust?”. This expression relates to being outside-in and the acid test we should always apply when we launch a campaign, write content or promote a specific value proposition – does this really create value for the customer within their context?

It’s all too easy to get carried away with all the internal hype from product management, development, marketing and other internal sources. Add to this management pressure to produce better results, time constraints for marketing to deliver, continual daily interactions between marketing team members, and we easily slip into blindly believing ourselves without outside validation – or to put it more bluntly – breathing our own exhaust.

Problem is, it’s not always apparent that we may have this problem, since we may be too close to the situation to step back and recognize it. However, if we don’t recognize it before the campaign, content or promotion is launched, we’ll inevitably face a mediocre result at best or abject failure at worst.

During the review process for any campaign, promotion, content or other marketing output, always ask questions to qualify whether it really connects with the prospective buyer within their context and current circumstances:

• What research do you have to support this?
• How was this tested?
• What did the test reveal?
• What outside-in validation do you have?
• What are competitors doing? How does this compare – what is different or similar?
• Ask the ‘breathing our own exhaust’ question – it’s a fun question that isn’t easy to answer and usually gets a good discussion going.

This is just a starter list of the type of questions to consider – develop your own to suit your circumstances. Be careful not make it feel like an inquisition; just ask good questions to do some constructive self analysis to ensure that the campaign, promotion, content, etc. is on the right track.

“The question should be, 'Is it worth trying to do?' not 'Can it be done?'” – Allard Lowenstein

An approach I particularly like that helps avoid the typical ‘breathing our own exhaust’ syndrome is to have a geographically distributed marketing team. That way, everyone has different daily exposures, interactions and perspectives and are less prone to breathing each other’s exhaust in the same location day in and day out. Having input from these different daily experiences will also add more value to the creativity and review processes.

Ask the ‘breathing our own exhaust’ question or your variation of it when something is being developed – ask yourself, ask you team members, ask the group.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com