Category: Marketing

Continuing from our last post we examine a few of the eleven trends for 2011 from the folks at trendwatching.com.  They are experts at observing trends and have created a list which anticipates what trends will impact consumers, businesses, and marketing departments.

2) Urbanization: Urbanization remains a big trend for the coming decade, with a majority of the global population currently living in urban areas and by 2030 60% of the global population will live in urban environments.  One aspect to Urbanization is that individuals in these communities tend to be more open to trying new services and products.  This presents the challenge of not only getting new customers in your city, but retaining your current ones.

One way to stand out amongst the noise is to embrace a cause or shared interest among your customers.  Barclays, a large international bank based in London has made their name known in London’s sustainability crowd by partnering with the City of London and helping sponsor the “Barclays Cycle Hire”

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3) Pricing Pandemonium: Mobile devices and social networks allow consumers to constantly receive targeted offers and discounts.  Amazon recently created an app that allows you to scan the barcode of a product in a store and compare it to the price on the Amazon website.

Some other examples of Pricing Pandemonium are:

• Group Buying – Think Groupon

• Membership Sales – Think of companies like Costco or BJ’s Wholesale.  Sales will be invitation only to members or the sales will have a limited amount or time.

• Local Discounts– With individuals broadcasting their locations with services like Foursquare and Checkpoints, companies can offer deals directly to the consumer.

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5) Online Status Symbols -Location-based Foursquare awards members with badges for performing tasks, including the Super mayor badge (awarded when someone is mayor of 10 different places at once), the Entourage badge (awarded when checking-in with 10 friends), the Gym Rat badge (awarded when someone has checked- in on 10 trips to the gym in 30 days), and even the Last Degree badge (awarded when checking-in at the North Pole.

Don’t want to go through the hassle of Foursquare?  Create a poster for a loyal customer and award them “Mayor of the Month.”  If this is done in a coffee shop, maybe adding what the person likes to drink and the newspaper they read on the poster.  It shows that you are paying attention to them and at the same time will create a sense of community in the coffeeshop.

7)  Social-Lites and Twinsumers–  Social-Lites are about discovery, while Twinsumers are consumers with similar purchasing patterns, likes and dislikes.  Consumers will talk more about brands this year than ever before and opportunities for brands that create engaging content that consumers want to share will be bigger than ever. Making it easy for Social-Lites to retweet or ‘like’ this content is of course requirement number one.

A couple examples of this:

• Levi – From the Levi’s store, users are able to share products with friends through the Friend Store, ‘Like’ them or search for ‘Top Liked’ products within Facebook.

• Gogobot– Users ask questions about destinations (i.e where should I stay in Sydney?), not just to the Gogobot community but also to their Facebook and Twitter networks.

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10. Eco-Superior – Expect to see a number of brands switch from purely marketing their products’ sustainability and eco-friendliness (only 5% of those products didn’t engage in any ‘greenwashing’ of their claims in 2010) and taking aim right at the heart of traditional alternatives: stressing the superior quality and design and increased durability of products in ways that will appeal to even the most eco-skeptic or financially-challenged consumer.

Here’s a small company that is using this strategy.

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Go to trendwatching.com to see the whole list.

-Patrick

From the folks at trendwatching.com come eleven trends for 2011.  They are experts at observing trends and have created a list which anticipates what trends will impact consumers, businesses, and marketing departments.

1) Random Acts of Kindness

As you can see from the above Twitter post from InterfloralUK the marketing department is not only communicating to the followers, but also listening to them.  By using a medium which is based on broadcasting individuals thoughts and links, InterfloralUK, will gain a considerable amount of positive feedback in the recipients personal network (especially if they pick an individual with several thousand followers).

Beyond a token interaction with their customers and followers InterfloralUK is creating a human touch to their brand.  By taking this approach, a large floral company is able to gain some of the closeness to the individuals that a small floral company in the neighborhood has with their community.

With smaller companies this might not be done over Twitter but through personal interactions, but can still have the same effect.  Regardless of what way you display the random acts of kindness, you will gain loyalty from your customers.

-Patrick

Here is a fascinating interview with Nancy Lublin, head of dosomething.org.  While the interview focuses on smarter ways of running a business, she points out a variety of interesting ways to market your company.  One interesting point that she makes is continuing to maintain a relationship with your former employees to leverage your marketing strategy.

Click the player below to listen.

 

Nancy’s point of keeping in touch with your former employees to create buzz is a good one.  While individuals may leave a company for new opportunities, it doesn’t mean they stop caring about their former employer.

It is easy to see how this would work for a large company like GM where they might send out a sneak peek of a prototype car coming out at the Detroit auto show.  It is important to keep in mind that small companies can do it too, especially since a smaller company will have more personal relationships with all the employees.

For example, lets take a construction company.  The services that they offered have always been straight forward.  Recently they gained some new certification for improved building techniques, such as energy efficient home building.  If they are one of the few companies in the area that now specializes in this, letting your former employees know this information might lead to new customers for your company.

-Patrick