Marketing overview and 2015 trends

Overview of marketing and trends in 2015

What is Marketing?Marketing is a word used almost as common as bread is consumed. The term encompasses just about any action a business takes to make itself ‘attractive’ and is often confused with the term ‘sales’.

SALES

the aim of sales is to get customers to want your product/ service

The Difference Between Marketing and Sales

MARKE T ING

the aim of marketing is to get your product/ service to how the customers want it

Marketing touches many areas of the business including customer interactions, internal teams, products and services, appearance and brand, communication and distribution channels. More often than not it is an organisation philosophy rather than just a function.

Basics of Marketing

At the heart of marketing is the all important CUS TOMER. However, smart marketing doesn’t mean giving the customer everything in the way they want it. It is knowing how to maximise sales opportunities and profit through clever strategies and tactics and within the limited resources.

Basics of Marketing

On a timeline, marketing can be broken down into long term and short term strategies.

Long term marketing relates to building the brand equity and strength.

This does not necessarily produce immediate results, however it builds your brand and business value over time. It is the beacon that sets the direction and focus for the business and the results will endure well beyond a sale.

Basics of Marketing

Short term strategies relate to tactics that will result in immediate leads and sales. This will get the tills ringing and the business buoyant. However sales will only keep coming as long as you keep spending.

The key for businesses is to have a combination of both long term and short term focus.

Basics of Marketing

In the last 15 years or so, marketing has evolved at a speed never before. This has been impacted by two main factors namely technology advancement and the growth of the internet.

The Two Biggest Challenges in Marketing

As a result, the two biggest challenges facing marketers today are:

Challenge 1: Explosion of data

“Every day, three times per second, we produce the equivalent of the amount of data that the Library of Congress has in its entire print collection. Most of it is…irrelevant noise.” Nate Silver statistician and writer

Gartner (technology consultants) estimates that within five years, most Chief Marketing Officers will have a bigger technology budget than Chief Information Officers do.

The Two Biggest Challenges in Marketing

Challenge 2. Exponential growth of communication channels

Today, the marketing eco-system has evolved to encompass the fast growing digital media. The barriers to creating a new media channel is low and anyone and everyone can have a go at it.

The Two Biggest Challenges in Marketing

Example of the Explosion in The Digital World

Example of the Explosion in The Digital World

10 predicted marketing trendsfor 2015

Content marketing will keep becoming more and more popular with organisations. Companies will increase their efforts in generating content on the internet in order to stand out amongst their competitors.

Quality content correctly targeted towards the customers’ interests will be the focus for many marketers.

1. Content marketing

With companies as well as individuals publishing more and more content digitally, it is inevitable that low quality content that do not add any value will increase.

This is further enhanced with social media where the anyone and everyone can be a self appointed marketer.

2. Increase in marketing noise

With the huge amount of data (and prolific content on), a marketer’s role is becoming more the ‘Chief Simplifiers’ to try to make sense of information.

It is not the case of how much information you have but the ability to critique available information and arrive at a critically thought through decision.

3. Use of marketing data

Social media has significantly changed customer’s behaviour as they become more elusive, immediate and short-term thinking.

This means that real time marketing is growing in importance with focus on faster adaptation and shorter lead time being the norm.

4. Agility and immediate focus

Usage and adoption of videos will keep growing as viewers are looking for easier ways to learn. Explainer videos fits in perfectly with shorter attention spans and helps as an alternative way to convert customers.

Salesforce recently added an explainer video on their home page and this increased their conversion rate by 20%.

5. Videos say it all

As consumers continue to resist homogenisation, marketers are having to target customers in smaller groups in order to localise and personalise content to them. This has been going on for a while and we believe it is here to stay.

Furthermore, over and over again marketers are finding better response rate when offers on emails and websites are personalised to the needs of the customers.

6. Micro targeting andPersonalisation

In the last two years, there had been an explosion of analytical tools. This has left marketers with many different tools and ways to integrate data from various platform but often requiring more effort and falling into the ‘too hard’ basket.

Providers are now racing to simplify these analytical tools and allowing easy user customisation, mobility and instant results in order to win a seat at the table.

7. Growth of simplified analytical tools

It is believed that it is inevitable that reliance by consumers on mobile technology such as mobile phones, tables and wearable tech will only keep rising. More and more predictions are seeing mobile web usage overtaking desktop internet use in the very near future.

The move will be from mobile friendly to mobile first. A focus on key mobile strategy is the path to future proofing an organisation.

8. Increased focus on mobile

Customers are continuing to want to have their say and exert their influence especially through social media channels. They want to know what is happening behind the scenes, who are the people and to be acknowledge as included as part of the ‘family’.

The control over of the marketing messages is beyond the marketing team now and companies will continue to include other internal teams as well as customers into brand ambassadors.

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9. Inclusivity is in

There’s no escaping that online marketing is now an essential part of marketing. As our time on the internet keeps increasing, marketers will increase their spend online.

Furthermore, online ad spend has an advantage of catering for small budgets to sizeable budgets as well as being measurable and targeted.

10. Increased online ad spend

To find out how to take advantage of these trends contact

Marketing Minds-the cutting edge in marketing

Contact: Anne Casey

[email protected]

+64 9 634 4390 or +64 21 654 390

Sources:http://www.wheelhouseadvisors.net,http://www.forbes.com/sites/avidan, http://www.slideshare.net/eMarketerInc/emarketer-webinar-retail-ecommerce-outlooktallying-the-true-impact-of-digital?next_ slideshow=1, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/16888567327404102/,http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-research-shows-social-networks-ideal-marketers/, http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats-list, http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/38109.asp?imcid=nl%23singleview#singleview, http://www.toprankblog.com/2014/05/digital-marketing-2015/,http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-garst/7-digital-marketing-trend_b_6493310.htmlhttp://trendwatching.com/trends/10-trends-for-2015/