It’s All About Life…

For the last several years I have taken my marketing expertise to the classroom. Teaching collegiate level courses on subject matters ranging from entrepreneurship, marketing, international marketing, consumer behavior and many, many other classes all surrounding the primary premise of business with emphasis in branding and marketing.

Let’s take a look at the 2016 Top 10 Marketing Trends you can expect to cause a ripple:

1. Embrace the Customer Experience: Use integrated tools to engage your customers, track buying behavior, measure sentiment and loyalty.
2. Ad Blockers as Game Changers: Consumers have had enough of in-your-face marketing tactics. If your advertisements are not relevant, they are annoying. Create ads that are seamless in their approach to blend in rather than interrupt the user’s experience.
3. Dream and Market in 3-D: Although 3D technology is still evolving ~ it is poised to move from novelty to mainstream.
4. Social Media as a Channel, Not a Strategy: Social media is one platform of many and is great at supporting broad campaigns.
5. Omnichannel will be Retails Best Friend: An integrated customer experience is essential ~ creating smooth interaction in lieu of several mini events. i.e.: Tweet for pizza! Domino’s was one of the first companies to put this marketing effort to work.
6. Big Data IS For Marketers: New tools are constantly entering the marketplace making mining and managing data easier.
7. It’s All About Going Mobile: The number of people who do their browsing on devices passed desk top users a while ago. At a minimum you should have a mobile-optimized and responsive website including custom apps and mobile-targeted campaigns.
8. Video Use Explodes While Live Streaming Finds a Purpose: If you want to engage with millennials video is a must-have. They prefer to find entertainment and education on YouTube over conventional means such as television.
9. No Rest For Content: Content is STILL king. Natural relevant content in the right channels will drive content campaigns.
10. Data, Data and More Data Will Be The Overarching Theme: Feel good marketing is a thing of the past. CEO’s, CMO’s and all other C-Suite influencers are looking to marketers for data before, during and after campaigns to validate return and gauge their marketing investments.

Over the last year we have experienced a lot of change. But as these trends indicate the driving factors are not new, they’ve simply matured. Focusing on the customer, delivering value and making decisions based on data as well as good ideas are the same factors that marketers have used for decades. It’s just packaged a little differently now. What is new is the innovation and creativity required to deliver value to your customer when and where they need it.

“Creativity is intelligence having fun” ~ Albert Einstein

Author: Carrie L. Devone

Living & Learning... View all posts by Carrie L. Devone