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The Future of Marketing

Businesswoman standing on a ladder looking through binocularsWhen you sit and think about the direction that marketing is going in, you can’t leave out social and mobile. I think that we all can agree that it is not a passing fad. A marketing/pr strategic plan that does not include these two elements is doomed for mediocracy.

The future winners will be those that can develop super creative content that can break through all of the clutter. Right now agencies are losing talented, out of the box thinking people to the Facebook’s and Google’s of the world. I think the future will be such that many big brands move away from the BIG agencies. The creative genius can now be found in freelancers, smaller agencies, and proper development of internal staff.

Here is a great article about Keith Weed’s, chief marketing for the Unilever brand, view on the future of marketing.

What do you see about the future of marketing/pr? Are BIG agencies going to remain the staple for BIG brands? Can brands train their own people do that they can save a chunk of their budget?

Get out your Social Media Yard Stick

In marketing, we all know that you are going to hear the phrase, “what is my ROI?”  What is the return that I will get for placing my money into this form of advertising?  It is a hard question to answer when talking about social media.  I am wondering if we are deep enough into social media to be able to properly measure the tool.  I think there are many that are doing a great job at generalizing the data that they receive.

One important factor that companies, be they small or large, need to realize is that social media is for the point of being social.  You can not continue to push the same old information that you have pushed in traditional media.  In order for social media to be successful, one must jump in and engage with an audience that may very well already be talking about your brand.  If your brand is not being discussed, think of ways to get on the minds of your possible customers.

In actuality, there are many tools that can be used in combination to figure out if you are hitting the mark with your current social media campaign. In researching ROI tools for our clients, here are a few that we do not mind recommending:

Radian6 – This tool is not the cheapest for a small business owner or a nonprofit to use, but it is extremely useful in all that it is capable of measuring.

Lithium Social Media Monitoring – This one is really easy on the eyes because it is based on the look and feel of Google. Lithium measures a variety of negative and positive signals that can give you a great overview to deliver in any upcoming presentation.

Trendrr – Many consider this to be very web 3.0 in its make up. This gives the user real time data that it gathers from microblogs, searc, social, and even video.  Many that we have spoken with love the location based specific data that they are able to obtain almost instantly.

If you have any ROI tools that you are successfully using, please let us know.  We love to share this information with our readers in the hopes of helping those that may be in a rut with showing their return on investment.