Marketing Trends for 2011

Are you keeping up?"

By Chuck Swensson, President of Creatis--February 2011

Now that 2011 is in full swing, is your marketing organization innovating, or struggling to keep up with the trends? Maybe your strategy is rock-solid, but your creative team is having a difficult time executing. Or, you are like many others - your plan is in place, but you just haven't had a chance to get the wheels turning.

According to MarketingPower.com, an AMA (American Marketing Association) survey was conducted on which marketing trends are the most significant in 2011. With such a large focus on social and mobile marketing, many organizations are having a difficult time not only understanding the competency, but actually learning how to apply it to their organization.

Here are two recommendations to help you keep up with the trends:

• Don't react. Consider your industry, your product or service, and most importantly, your customer. Will these marketing resources help you sell more, or operate more efficiently? It always goes back to your overall marketing strategy and understanding what tactics create alignment, versus what would be great to have. Not every company is going to succeed simply by using mobile marketing. Don't follow a trend simply to be a follower - it may become a distraction that keeps you from servicing your customer.
• Get outside help. The ability to be great or successful at something, many times takes outside counsel. Sure, you can eventually bring a new competency in-house, but before you invest and ingrain, it may be beneficial to find a specialty firm that can help you with your social or mobile strategy, and provide recommendations on how to implement it within your organization. You may pay more up front, but knowledge transfer and accuracy in solution will far outweigh any initial cost savings you were wishing for by building internally.

As you consider investing your time and energy to innovate your marketing approach, consider looking at marketing trends through a more project-based or temporary perspective. Build a team on-site to implement a social marketing strategy. Work with an outside agency to craft a market-focused mobile campaign. Consider using outside experts to gain inside knowledge.Then when you see results and sustainability, consider shifting resources internally to gain additional traction.

The philosophy of Creatis has always been to help companies stay nimble and innovative. We continue to help internal and external agencies flex to the needs of their business through building creative teams on-site or sending creative projects to our creative studio. We encourage companies to innovate their marketing approach through building scalable solutions.

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. - Peter Drucker