2010 has been quite a year for marketers. A recovering economy, an empowered consumer and new technological advances have all come together to transform the marketer’s landscape in extraordinary ways. As we look to 2011, and how we can have the most impact on our clients’ businesses, we’re excited about the possibilities that emerge from the major trends, and want to share them with you.
A timely conference, called the Future of Marketing, made the first attempt to draw a road map for what’s next. Sixty marketing leaders and luminaries each had 60 seconds to offer their vision. We’ve highlighted just a few of their summaries here, and added the perspective of one of the most well-known marketing thought leaders, too.
The future of marketing is: Hyper-personalization
Expert: Nick Bilton, author of I Live in the Future and Here’s How It Works, reporter for The New York Times and lead technology writer for NYTimes.com’s Bits Blog
As a technology reporter for NYTimes.com, Bilton is plugged in to every online media trend, and can identify how it reverberates throughout the marketing industry. To him, the Internet is a catalyst that constantly shapes and reshapes the consumer/company landscape that lies ahead. He explains:
“The birth of the internet was the beginning, but we will feel the aftershocks and tremors for years as we move from a broad audience of readers or viewers to a very narrow audience of me and you, each a target market and each always in the center of the map.”
To Bilton, it’s a “me, me, me” marketing world, thanks to online tactics like social that empower consumers as never before. In his vision of the future, personalization becomes so efficient “[y]ou could even imagine a world where you pick up your New York Times, and it’s actually personalized to the way that you consume news and where you share it.” Likewise, the expectation of personalization and accessibility to brands will only become more constant, and the filtering of information through online communities will help determine what customers respond to and what they ignore. As a communication tool, social media hands consumers a megaphone — and companies had better be listening.
Read more about it in The Heinrich Report
We’ve talked about the importance of getting personal often. It takes planning and a solid marketing strategy to formulate the right relevant message for the right audience, no matter what marketing channel you use.
Read Personalization: Responding to Consumers With Relevance
Read Connecting to the New Consumer
The future of marketing is: Mobile
Expert: Chuck Martin, director of MediaPost’s Center for Media Research and author of The Third Screen
In his 60 seconds, Chuck Martin calls mobile a real game-changer. “There are five billion cell phones around the world right now,” he says, and for marketers it’s a unique chance to get personal like never before. “Marketers can tell where customers are located today by phone. They can provide maximum value, whether by deals or unique services, based on the optimum mindset of the consumer.” Mobile seems like a natural fit for marketing’s next new phase, one that can satisfy the need-it-now consumer that’s being shaped by the technology-driven marketplace.
There’s evidence that the mobile future is already here. Just look at this holiday shopping season. Mobile shopping surged on Black Friday. According to The Wall Street Journal, price comparison apps and loyalty programs via mobile are on the rise, with 59% of adult cell phone owners planning to use their device for holiday shopping and/or planning this year. The result: “The battle for holiday shopping dollars is shifting to the palms of consumers’ hands.”
According to Mobile Marketer, big brands carried out mobile strategies in a big way this year, introducing new mobile apps that engage the customer and help make their holiday shopping easier:
- Wal-Mart offers a new “My Holiday” iPhone app, designed to offer “a completely immersive holiday shopping experience that encourages shopping and transactions on applications, mobile Web and stores.”
- Sports Authority teamed up with Foursquare to drive traffic to stores via a cash giveaway promotion. You check in to Foursquare on your phone, post it to Twitter, then shop and see if your name gets called.
- Saks Fifth Avenue also teamed up with Foursquare to offer customers special content and prizes. Erin Gleason, press relations manager at Foursquare, New York, says stores recognize the location-based check-in service as a way to “connect with their consumers on an immediate and personal level.”
Read more about it in The Heinrich Report
Immediate, personal, rewarding. Mobile easily wraps it all into one package. We’ve covered the significance of mobile this year, so you can catch up and be ready for 2011.
Read our two-part series on loyalty, and how mobile fits in:
Understanding the New Loyalty Landscape
The New Loyalty Landscape, Part Two: Insights From an Industry Expert
Read more about mobile:
Get Personal With Mobile Marketing
The future of marketing is: The socialization of business
Expert: Brian Solis, author of Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
Brian Solis often advises on how to use social media to market without losing control of your message. At the Future of Marketing conference and in recent interviews, he emphasizes that marketers must shift their strategy in significant ways:
- From monitoring to listening
- From participation to engagement
- From response to leadership
To quote from his 60 seconds at the conference, “The future of marketing really isn’t marketing at all; it’s building something that’s meaningful, worth supporting, and ultimately worth sharing.”
The Heinrich Report, has advocated content as the way to accomplish all of these goals. But in a MediaPost interview, Solis goes a step further. “Context has become king, not content,” he explains, “and you may have to change your story to connect with varying social consumers.”
Put simply: It’s time to not just “be social,” but to listen, learn about the interests of the niches your customers hang out in within their social networks, and understand how to engage them. That’s the way to make a meaningful connection — and it’s a connection that’s crucial to marketing success. As social media creates a space where consumers become advocates, every individual has an audience within a social network. As MediaPost existentially puts it, we, as marketers are marketing “to an audience who has an audience, who has an audience.”
Read more about it in The Heinrich Report
It’s no longer a world where one mass message is the only one you need. And you can’t talk “to” your customers. You have to dive in, find who wants want, and engage different groups with the right message in the right place. The message must be relevant to resonate. Your reward: greater marketing reach.
Read more about listening: The Benefits of Listening in Social Media
Read more about the importance of content: How to Make Your Content King
The future of marketing is: Permission marketing
Seth Godin: author, speaker, thought leader
Everybody’s heard of Seth Godin. Though he didn’t speak at the Future of Marketing microconference, excluding him from any conversation about the future of marketing would feel like a huge oversight. With a dozen marketing books to his name, it’s fair to call him a guru. Despite the volumes he’s written, he often sums up his view of the future with two words: permission marketing.
Just this past April, he wrote that marketing is “based on sending messages to people who want to get them, who choose to get them, who would miss you if you didn’t send them.” Permission opens the door to personalization. It’s your opportunity to generate loyalty and intimacy with your customer, and give them what they want, when and where they want it.
To see permission marketing in action, look at how Starbucks leads the way. Recently named Mobile Marketer of the Year by the online blog Mobile Marketer, Starbucks was one of the first brands this year to experiment with an opt-in strategy that allowed the company to send “relevant messages based on age, gender, interests and — for the first time — location” on mobile devices.
Here’s how it works: When you opt in to receive certain Starbucks communications, it’s like telling Starbucks it’s ok to acknowledge your location and respond with something like an offer for the nearby store.
The end result is win-win: The company has a list of loyal customers and personal information they can use to send a relevant message. The customer gets great deals and relevant messages and offers they wouldn’t otherwise receive. They feel understood — and that’s a great way to create loyal advocates for your company.
Read more about it in The Heinrich Report
Getting information directly from customers can help define any marketing strategy. We’ve been talking about the importance of customer insight all year, how it can help you build trust. With trust, you get access; you earn permission to keep talking to your customers, and gain greater insight.
Read more about gaining customer insight:
Three Reasons Online Survey Tools Can Work for You
Testing: The Science Behind Your Marketing Campaign
Consumer Trend Watch: Catch Up and Keep Your Marketing Relevant
Join The Heinrich Report as we look to the future
You can read a transcript of The Future of Marketing Conference, or listen to each speaker at the Web site. We suggest you do. What we’ve offered here are just a few snapshots of a much larger picture — one that we’ve been covering right here in The Heinrich Report, too. Stay with us in 2011 to keep your eyes on the future, and make sure your business is a part of it. We’re here to help.
