The Marketing Bureau

By Steven Howard
First Published in “Monday Morning Marketing Memo #257”

At the start of the year I shared with Monday Morning Marketing Memo readers the 11 major marketing trends that required the greatest attention of both small business owners and large corporate marketers. These were the ones, I suggested, that you needed to focus on and not let other faddish topics distract you.

How good was my advice? Let's do a review of all 11 items and evaluate.

1.      Social Media
My advice was to not treat social media like an advertising campaign, but to "think of social media as a channel leading to interactions with communities of like interest."

If you followed this advice, you are well ahead of the game. As we wrote in last week's Monday Morning Marketing Memo, the question remains: how do you integrate social media marketing into your marketing strategy, for social media is not a strategy or a strategic initiative upon itself.

2.     Consumer Frugality
As foreshadowed, consumer spending has been anemic throughout the year. Uncertainty over the economic stability of both Europe and the USA has been a key concern all year. We cautioned that basing a marketing strategy on a robust rebound in consumer spending would be fraught with danger. Unfortunately, we were right.

3.      Luxury Market Will Boom
Some evidence of this happening, particularly in China, India, Brazil and Russia, but admittedly not to the extent that I expected.

4.      Emerging Markets Are Key
And so they remain. Unfortunately, the moderate growth in these markets was not strong enough to drive world economic growth. But they will continue to grow faster than the developed markets, so if you are not reaching the consumers in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) markets, as well as in Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico, now is the time to develop a strategy for doing so.

5.      Green Marketing Is Here To Stay
Definitely, though there seemed to be less news and noise about green marketing these past 12 months. But remember, the 2011 Cone/Echo Global CR Opportunity Study showed that 81% of the surveyed consumers feel brands and organizations have a responsibility to address key social and environmental issues beyond their local communities.

6.      Marketing Fundaments Remain As Important As Ever.
In fact, companies that shunted aside strategic marketing disciplines often got burned.

7.      Cause Marketing
Seems to have been more low key this year than I expected, probably due to economic uncertainty. Organizations, however, continue to seek ways to be seen as genuinely contributing to the needs of society and so this trend will remain on track, albeit a little slower than anticipated.

8.      Pay It Forward And Random Acts Of Kindness By Organizations And Companies
This perhaps was more of a fad and less of a trend than I predicted. It certainly has not taken off like I thought it would.

9.      Responsibility
Global consumers are looking to the corporate world to help solve social problems, and are changing their purchasing habits to support brands and organizations that do more than just talk about community concerns. This marketing trend picked up speed throughout the course of the year and it's not one you want to miss or misunderstand.

10.  Customer Retention Marketing
Has increased in importance, and if you don't believe me ask Netflix which lost over 1 million customers in approximately 12 weeks due to management miscues and poor communications with customers.  The unseen costs of lost customers needs to be better understood by senior executives and small business owners.

11.  Critical Return of Corporate Image Management
We have seen Nike and Starbucks rebound, while Netflix, Qantas, Australian banks in general, Telstra, Nokia, Citibank, and other brands fall to the wayside.

So, there you have it. Other than #8, all 11 key marketing trends identified were at some level of importance throughout the year. If you would like to review all 11 trends in greater detail, I have posted these in the Resource Center on our website at Top 11 Marketing Trends.

Steven Howard is a leading marketing consultant, keynote speaker, and author of CORPORATE IMAGE MANAGEMENT, POWERFUL MARKETING MINUTES, ASIAN WORDS OF WISDOM, MORE Powerful Marketing Minutes, and ASIAN WORDS OF KNOWLEDGE. He may be contacted via e-mail at steven@howard-marketing.com, or via his web site: www.howard-marketing.com