The fundamentals of marketing are always going to be the
same, but with the landscape changing at the speed of technology, what matters
most is how one activates the fundamentals. Smart marketers know that they need
to get ahead of the trends and anticipate the next big things, or else be
devoured by their competitors.
Transparency is an important tool of marketing.
Consumers are going to continue to exert power and influence. The idea of
radical transparency is something that few brands are taking advantage of now,
and most brands fight it. The best brands aren’t necessarily those with the
best stories, or sort of made up fictional stories, but those that give an
accurate and real time picture of what they are doing in the interest of the
consumer.
Chief Marketing Officers are actually Chief Simplifier
Officers. Most companies have arranged themselves in endless vertical
silos - by geography, product, or function that hamper them when it comes to
working more closely and with the free flow of ideas. To optimize consumer and
customer engagements, CMOs should put silo busting on top of their agenda and
begin to think holistically about the company’s overall value proposition,
integrating messages and insights across business units, geographies, and
functional groups.
There is a growing need for marketing technologists.
Too many companies think in terms of digital marketing. Instead, they should be
thinking in terms of marketing in a digital world. The best marketer in a
digital world would be the marketing technologists, people with heavy digital
DNA and technology acumen. They should be integrated seamlessly with the
marketing groups and play an important role in how marketing strategies are
developed and applied.
Agility marketing is for winners. Social media
produced a different, more elusive consumer with short-term thinking. Marketers
are now chasing their daily meanderings in “likes”, “shares”, “tweets”,
click-through rates, and ever more immediate metrics. However, the best
marketers should have more consumer data, capable of faster adaption, shorter
lead times, and real-time marketing.
Marketing should be about personalization. The world
is more connected because of technology, but marketing is becoming more
regionalized, localized, and even more individualized, as consumers resist
standardization and cookie-cutter templates. Personalization is not a trend. It
is a marketing tsunami that should transform how we think about and how we
manage global brands.
Internal Communications are a must. Businesses
should put a strong focus on internal communications as a marketing asset. If
there is poor communication, it’s difficult to engage employees to become brand
ambassadors. By implementing a strong
internal communications process, employees will feel engaged and will want to
live the brand and better share the vision and strategy of the company.
There will be previous trends to ignore, present trends to
tackle, and future trends to watch because everyone is looking for the next big
thing. While keeping an eye on the
future is crucial, sometimes it’s easy to get so caught up gazing into the
crystal ball that we lose touch with the timeless fundamentals.
Listening to your customers is a marketing fundamental that will
never go out of style. Neither will remarkable content. Make
sure you take the following steps when developing a marketing campaign.
1.
Know Your Target
2.
Educate on Your Benefits
3.
Craft A Strong Call to Action
4. Measure, Monitor, Log, Report and Learn
Now
that you've put in the work and you are ready to push your campaign live be
sure to measure and monitor the progress. Learn from your efforts, it will come
in handy for each campaign that follows.
What
were the results? Did they meet expectations? If so, why? If not, why? Know
the answers to these questions, understand the answers, identify how you can
make a campaign better, identify what worked. Log these answers, analyze the
data and work to make each subsequent campaign better.
Marketing
is a fundamental part of business. A
comprehensive and strategic branding and marketing plan is a fundamental part
of a successful business. If you are
wondering whether the marketing tactics you are currently employing are working
for your business, then they’re not.
But, we can help!
No comments:
Post a Comment