“It’s all about protecting and nurturing the brand”
Writing this post made me think of R.E.M.’s hit song. Yes, things are a bit crazy but this is also an exciting time for marketing professionals. As we start the New Year, we find the barometer for “change” ratcheted up a few dozen notches. So, here’s my list. Feel free to add some of yours.
1. Social Media Tool Explosion and ROI. Marketers will accelerate efforts to identify, leverage and measure the results of social media marketing. Faced with opportunity and great tools (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs) companies will create task forces and teams to brainstorm, investigate, leverage and launch new ways to generate revenue and satisfy customers. Engagement, interactions, Tweets, Likes, and earned media all count. In 2011, it’s more about measuring the true value of social media. Marketers will start to make social media a part of their everyday life.
Advice: ROI? What is the “return on ignoring”?
2. Social Media Integration. Social media will start to be integrated into the entire enterprise including crisis management. Understanding the abundance of new opportunities out there and connecting all the dots is what’s important. The relevant “dots” are all of the key customer touch points.
Advice: Integrate or disintegrate
3. Brand Monitoring — from the fringe to the fast track. This year, we’ll see more focus on improving and reinforcing the brand in social media. Marketers need to gain a better understanding by listening and learning about what customers and prospects think about their brands. Many social media monitoring tools exist but most companies need to focus on developing business processes, social media guidelines and to glean insights from such monitoring activities.
Advice: Listen, engage, measure = succeed
4. Multicultural Marketing Communication Explodes. The best marketers truly understand that the U.S. has become more culturally diverse. Marketers must be more sensitive to society’s demographic shifts and changing values, which in turn affect consumers’ reactions to different products and marketing practices. In 2011, marketers will focus on understanding the needs of multicultural markets, developing powerful brand stories and messages to attract and engage these markets.
Advice: Huge brand and sales opportunity
5. Building Longer Term Customer Relationships. Terms like CLV (customer lifetime value) will gain popularity as marketers come to fully understand the value of acquiring and retaining high value customers. Sales are no longer viewed as transactions – each sale is the first step in a carefully orchestrated process to convert sales into lifetime customers. In 2011, marketers will not invest in what’s cool, they’ll invest in opportunities to build relationships.
Advice: Retention is far less expensive than acquisition
6. “Marketing Technologist” role becomes even more critical. We predict that more marketers will understand the importance of forming a closer partnership between marketing and I.T. to build technology that meets customer needs and works. The “marketing technologist” must understand the ever-expanding onslaught of technology — now.
Advice: Start moving in this direction
7. Mobile Marketing, Shopping and Telecom in General Goes Bonkers. Apps and Web browsing start to explode, Skype goes public and a major player like Google buys them. Apple’s FaceTime becomes widely popular as the way to have a conversation. In 2011, marketers start to invest in more ways to reach the growing millions of smart phone users. Digital researcher eMarketer (Dec. 2, 2010) tells us that “2010 is proving to be the first year for widespread mobile shopping. Consumers in greater numbers are using their mobile devices to assist in-store shopping, from browsing retailer websites to scanning barcodes to get product and price comparison information, to checking in to search for deals.”
Advice: Here we go, Verizon to announce iPhone this week!
8. Consumers are in Control (to Stay). Consumers who are accustomed to passively accepting a daily dose of TV and print ads will reject this outdated model and choose the media they want to consume. Much to the dismay of traditional ad agencies, social networks will not go away. From Twitter to blogs to Facebook, consumers are in control and this trend is red hot.
Advice: Inbound marketing beats outbound marketing
9. LinkedIn cements its lead in the business networking space. LinkedIn is your single source for maintaining, keeping and getting a job. Invaluable in a bad (or good) economy. It is hard to think of LinkedIn in the same space as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Read: Why LinkedIn is the social network that will never die. LinkedIn is for the professional side of all of us – and it is the business networking tool for our complicated, competitive, ever-changing world.
Advice: Invest time in LinkedIn
10. Marketers Will Really Leverage Ad Agency Creativity. For too long marketers have looked to their agencies for advertising and campaign ideas — only. In 2011, marketers will wake up to the fact that agencies employ some of the best “all around” creative talent in the world. Why shouldn’t ad agencies be involved in deeper aspects of the client’s business from new product development to strategic planning? Also, the quest for the “Big Idea” will be as important as ever but will manifest itself across a number of smaller social media projects from Twitter to Facebook to blogs. Marketers will look to agencies to leverage creative skills beyond the production of ads.
Advice: Win/win
11. QR (Quick Response codes). Those funny looking squares (mainstream in Japan) are starting to appear in the U.S. on everything from print vehicles to business cards. The proliferation of smart phones will help QR codes make an impact on the print world and may even help to revive the downward trend for physical newspapers.
And guess what? QR codes can be tracked. Companies like Verizon and AT&T will make reading QR codes so easy you won’t even need to download a special app on your phone. Interactive print ads. Imagine that.
Advice: Now, there’s even hope Rover will get his job back fetching the newspaper on the front lawn.
[Please note: This is a re-post of an original MENG Blend Blog post.]
R.E.M. – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) lyrics are the property and copyright of their owners.
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Great predictional and reading while REM blasts on my headphones was a lot of fun too. And learning the words of the song was a special bonus – never knew them.
Highly recommend all marketers read this, print it and tape it to their monitor so they see it every day.
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Comeptitor
Find New Customers
http://www.findnewcustomers.com
Hi Jeff,
Glad you enjoyed listening to that cool “R.E.M.” experience while reading 2011 predictions! Thanks for the positive feedback and happy New Year.
Mark
Mark–Like the music selection!
Great minds think alike! Our forecasts for 2011 are similar for different reasons. (Note: I wrote about Social Media’s Dirty Little Secret: No one’s measuring it! today!)
You’ve added multi-cultural communications where I would include more targeted communications based on understanding your audience. This is means know who’s buying your product and why. Then adapt your message to meet their needs.
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
Heidi,
Thanks for your comments and glad you like the music! I read your blog and great point about social media measurement (or lack thereof). Very well done. Marketing is exploding with new opportunities in 2011.
Mark
I read your post on MENG and have been thinking about it ever since. It’s a really good list, however I might add or embellish generally & comment on two others.
Yes, measure, analyze and understand (what you are measuring & analyzing) and then make decisions based on your understanding. I am finding measuring without analysis and understanding; lots of data but companies & marketers not really doing anything with it.
#11 QR codes have been around for 10 years, will they finally come into their own now?
#9 My weakest point is commitment to LI. I’ve not connected with the many people I should have over the almost 10 years I have been a member, and I’ve not asked for recommendations. I need to change that but cant get excited to use my time there when things like Quora come along……. any suggestions, especially now as I have met so many fabulous people like you and Cheryl through social media and organizations like MENG?
@CASUDI
Hi Caroline
Glad you enjoyed the post. I agree fully on the importance of good analysis to precede marketing decisions. Generally, it is the hardest part so no wonder many marketers skip this critical phase. I am predicting that QR codes will make it big in the U.S. Japan seems to take the lead in some of these areas and I do not believe there is any logical reason why QR codes are only now starting to gel in the U.S. Just think about the dozens of ways to use QR codes from print ads to collateral. I am also a strong proponent of LinkedIn as a networking tool. I am familiar with Quora but it is not a substitute. LinkedIn “is” for the professional side of all of us and like other tools, if you invest time initially, I think the rewards will come. My recommendation is to invest the time.
Thanks again for your comments.
Mark