The marketing world never stands still and the past 12 months have been no exception. The fast rate of development and customer uptake in the fields of social media and mobile have kept us all on our toes in 2011 and, as always, have provided new and exciting ways to engage customers.

But let’s not focus too much on what has happened in 2011 and look ahead to see what developments we think 2012 will bring.

This time we sat down with the whole Brinn team to pull together our list of marketing predictions for 2012. We came up with a huge list, which included everything from the sublime to the irrelevant right thought to the completely ridiculous! Instead of exposing you to all of these, and in the interests of brevity, we have instead carefully chosen our top 5 marketing predictions for 2012.

As always please contribute your own predictions in the comments section.

Here they are:

1. Huge Growth in Mobile Commerce and Marketing

Predicted by: Ally

In January this year I made my top five marketing predictions for 2011. I promised I would come back and review these towards the end of the year and, amazingly, we are now pretty much there. So will I feel all powerful with my fantastic ability to predict the future. Or will I be left feeling rather embarrassed like the leader of a religious cult who has wrongly predicted the end of the world? Let’s find out!

1. Price and value will be key communication messages

“Brands and retailers will be keen to communicate good value in 2011”

This prediction was bang on (if I do say so myself!). As high inflation and sluggish growth in the economy continued to bite, brands focussed on value as a key communication message. Organisations that were already perceived to be value brands hit the message home even harder (with the strapline ‘beat the VAT rise’ being used it seemed by almost everyone in January and February).

But even the more premium brands and retailers focused on value as a key marketing message. John Lewis continued to create powerful advertising campaigns centered round their ‘never knowingly undersold’ proposition.

The already price competitive supermarket chains also tried even harder to promote themselves as the best value with a range of ‘Price Promise’ initiatives. New Tesco Chief Executive Philip Clarke was also keen to focus on promoting value in new ways.

Verdict = Bang On!

2. Social and mCommerce will Become More Prominent

“As the uptake of smart phones and social networking continues to grow exponentially, expect to see both of these provide new ways for us to consume products”

I was making two points here – that ecommerce will spread and merge into the areas of social media and also mobile. I would say I was right with mobile but it’s still too early to tell with social media.

On the mobile front, the growth of web content consumption via mobile devices has been huge. For all of our clients’ websites we’re seeing around 10% of traffic coming in on mobile devices now (up from about 3% this time last year). This will no doubt continue to rise and it has already had huge implications on the ecommerce marketplace. Almost all of the large online retailers now have mobile stores or apps that allow consumers to browse and buy much more easily on a mobile device. This will continue to grow exponentially and if you run an online store without a mobile store format then I’m afraid to say it won’t be long before you get left behind.

On the social media front things have been much more underwhelming. Sure, a few online retailers have launched online store offerings directly through Facebook, but it’s yet to become commonplace or take off in any real way. I would also argue that there is no real sign of this imminent movem towards social commerce is either. Integration with social media sites on ecommerce websites is becoming not only commonplace but also pretty much vital… but as for purchasing directly through Facebook, results have been pretty poor.

Verdict = Right AND Wrong

3. Smaller Groups and Smaller Networks are the Way Forward

“Although social networking platforms such as Facebook continue to grow their user base, consumers will begin to split their networks into smaller groups or use a selection of new, niche social networking platforms to engage with different groups they’re involved with”

On a personal level, this year I’ve noticed more and more the difficulty and frustration of using Facebook when many different social groups are all in the one place. I have close friends, acquaintances, work colleagues and family on Facebook but I don’t want to share the same information with all of them. Despite making a number of changes to how this is managed in Facebook, it’s still cumbersome and difficult to implement and there’s been no real progress on this front.

Google + was launched in the summer, which focuses on making the separation of different social networks much easier by allowing users to separate groups into different social ‘circles’. The launch of this platform was much anticipated and there is already a staggering 50 million users on Google +. However usage levels of the new platform by users still appear to be low as we all try to work out quite how it actually works!

This idea of separating social networks is still an extremely pertinent subject and one I believe will happen and will have big marketing implications in the future. Progress in 2011 has been slow and it’s still too early to tell what shape this will take.

Verdict = Not yet Clear

4. Online Search will Change (Nothing New There Then!)

“Online search is continually changing and when it comes to optimising websites for search engines this means the goal posts are always moving”

When I read this prediction back I though to myself ‘Duh! Of course online search will change – it’s always changing’. Maybe I just put this in to make sure I was right with at least one of my predictions!

And I was right – online search has continued to change and evolve with Google, as always, leading the way. Twitter updates were included in search results (before being removed again), ‘official’ sites were given more prominence at the top of the rankings and Google’s Panda 2.5 algorithm update appears to have reduced the benefit of link building from low quality directory and article sites. This all has implications on the way we effectively optimize our websites for search and look out for more changes, and more changes, and more changes to come.

Verdict = Bang On!

5. TV Advertising will make a Comeback?

“With online streaming, digital TV streaming and the new advertising model for sites such as YouTube, there is now once again space for the traditional TV advertising format”

We’ve all talked for so long about the death of TV advertising but I predicted that 2011 would be a year we began to realise that there’s still great benefit to be had from the 30-second TV ad format. I think it’s fair to say this prediction was correct. Firstly, with the growth of on demand and online television as well as the advertising now used on sites such as YouTube, the 30-second TV ad format has seen resurgence in popularity over online banner advertising and other forms of online advertising. Secondly, I feel advertisers have begun to fall in love with the TV ad format all over again. Firms like British Airways and John Lewis have put a lot of budget into creating adverts that really resonate with consumers and highlight the value of the brand. I think John Lewis have been much more successful than British Airways at actually achieving this but that’s a story for another day. One thing I clear though – the TV advert is here to stay.

Verdict = Bang On!

Just like Nostradamus himself I can’t be 100% correct all of the time! Overall though I’m pleased that the majority of my 2011 predictions were on the ball.

There’s always a lot of talk about the latest marketing methods and how they will completely rewrite the way we promote our businesses. For the past couple of years that talk has centered round social media and this was reflected in my top marketing predictions for 2011. Interestingly though, important a marketing tool as it is, it hasn’t completely re-written the rulebook. Yes social media is important but the fundamental principles of marketing are still the same and a lot of the other tools we’ve used for 50 years plus are still equally important in running a successful marketing campaign.

The lesson to take from this is that in a fast-moving discipline like marketing it’s important to stay up to date with the latest tools available - but just make sure you don’t forget about the old ones, they can be just as effective.

What will my predictions be for 2012? Well you don’t have to wait too long too find out - I’ll follow this post up with my 2012 predictions before the end of the year.

It’s a new year and what better way to start it off than by predicting the top 5 marketing trends and predictions for 2011. Believe me, there’s a whole lot more than 5 with things, as always, moving at a fast rate of noughts – especially in the online marketing world.

In the interest of brevity and keeping things simple though let’s stick to the top 5:

1. Price and value will be key communication messages

With higher rates of inflation, the increase of VAT, even steeper fuel prices and much, much more, in 2011 consumers will see their money not stretch as far as it used to. This will have a knock on effect on what marketing messages consumers respond positively to and price and value will be a key area. This doesn’t necessarily mean the cheaper the better but brands and retailers will be keen to communicate good value in 2011. We’ve already seen a number of advertising messages over the past couple of weeks offering to ‘beat the VAT rise’ and keep prices at the previous rate. Expect a lot more where this came from as well as more upmarket retailers such as John Lewis continuing to promote their ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ value propositions.

2. Social and mCommerce Will Become More Prominent

As the uptake of smart phones and social networking continues to grow exponentially, expect to see both of these provide new ways for us to consume products.

mCommerce (basically ecommerce on mobile devices) has been a bit of a slow starter but as the technology continues to develop expect to see the purchasing of products on your smart phone increasingly commonplace.

Social networking has proven a great way for brands to engage with their customers and in 2011 you can expect this to go even further with the possibility of purchasing products directly from Facebook. If someone in your network purchases a product then they can choose to share this on their wall – providing an extremely powerful referral effect. This provides an exciting prospect for businesses to turn their social media presence into tangible product sales.

In 2011 brands both large and small will have a great opportunity to use these two new technologies to their advantage. As a result the importance of having a multi-platform ecommerce business will increase tenfold.

3. Smaller Groups and Smaller Networks are the Way Forward

Since it is, without doubt, the most important marketing trend at the moment, let’s stay on social networking.

Although social networking platforms such as Facebook continue to grow and grow their user base, consumers will begin to split their networks into smaller groups or use a selection of new, niche social networking platforms to engage with different groups they’re involved with.

Something that has been identified as more people use social networking is that individuals don’t want to share the same information with everyone in their network. Whether they are a work connection, someone from their football team, a school friend or a family member, individuals want to communicate with each of these groups differently – not in a holistic manner.

Facebook has already brought out the new Groups feature in 2010 (see more here) and in 2011 we will see this adopted more widely as well as other new methods of segmenting a users audience.

The brands that follow this closely, understand the implications and act on them accordingly will perform best in social media in 2011.

4. Online Search Will Change (Nothing New There Then!)

Online search is continually changing and when it comes to optimising websites for search engines this means the goal posts are always moving. This can’t be avoided though – Google need to continue to innovate and provide us with the most relevant search results.

In 2011 it is not clear exactly what is coming but here are some definites:

Local Searching

Google will begin to show users search results from their local area more prominently – even if the user is not specifically searching locally. To me this is a bad move in many ways. Ok, you may be searching for a dry cleaner and one in the local area would definitely be of benefit but what if you run an ecommerce business selling products across the UK – is locality really a major factor in that case?

Google Instant

Google Instant came out in late 2010 and the jury is still out in terms of how it affects searching behaviour. Look out for the first signs of this kind of research coming out within the next couple of months because it will have an effect on how your business should successfully optimise your site.

Social Search

Yep sorry I’m harping on about social networking again! Google have already began to index tweets in their search results and, at the same time, Facebook will definitely become more geared towards searching for products and services within the ‘social sphere’.

Whether it is Google, Facebook or others who pioneer this, search results will eventually take into account sites that those in your social network have also searched for. As always, companies keeping abreast of these trends and what they mean for their marketing strategy will perform best in 2011.

 

5. Will TV Advertising Make a Comeback?

Lets face it; TV advertising is nowhere near as powerful as it used to be. With technology such as Sky+, the fragmentation of television audiences and, of course, the advent of the Internet and consumption of online media, television advertising just doesn’t have the same mass audience any more.

As a format though, the 30-second TV ad will actually grow in popularity. With online streaming, digital TV streaming and the new advertising model for sites such as YouTube, there is now once again space for the traditional TV advertising format. In addition to this, the technology available today means that the production of a 30 second advert is now much more cost-effective for small and large businesses alike. Could this be the ‘bringing back to life’ of the TV ad?

Anyway that’s it – now lets wait and see if I’m right!

ARE YOU ALWAYS ON? YOUR BRAND IS!

Ok so it’s a bit of a buzz phrase in the marketing world at the moment but “always on” marketing is here to stay and it has implications for your business.

WHAT IS ALWAYS ON MARKETING?

It does what in says on the tin in this case – it’s the realisation that, no matter what business you’re in, your brand is always in the limelight being consumed, perceived and judged by the public.

The advent and continually larger part that social media has to play in our lives is one of the major reasons for this and, perhaps ironically, it’s the effective use of these same social media tools that can help your business react to the always on brand culture.

LET ME GIVE YOU A REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE OF HOW THIS APPLIES TO A BUSINESS IN THE RESTAURANT SECTOR (A PARTICULARLY AFFECTED INDUSTRY OF THE ALWAYS ON BRAND):

I went to Pizza Express on Sunday evening and, in comparison to the usual experience I’ve had many times before at this restaurant, this time the service was poor and in general not what I’ve come to expect from Pizza Express.

I’ll not go in to too much detail but it took a long time for our meals to arrive, staff appeared to be too busy cleaning the restaurant after a busy weekend rather than serving customers, our waitress seemed to be avoiding us whenever possible and at the end of the meal there was a mix up with a special offer we were supposed to receive because of unclear and unspecific descriptions on the promotional flyer. Overall it wasn’t a great experience.

If this had happened to me, even 5 years ago, I may have told a couple of friends, family and work colleagues about the experience but that would have been it. That in itself wouldn’t have been great for Pizza Express but they’d probably love to go back to those days now if they could!

Think about what many do if they have a bad experience with a brand in today’s world. Well I’m blogging about it here for a start so that gives you a clue…

Consumers go online and share their experiences (often with people they don’t even know!)

We all now have a raft of different social media platforms at our fingertips that we use to share and connect with different groups of people. Lets look at what I could have done on Sunday evening after my experience at Pizza Express:

Post a status update on my Facebook page giving a much wider audience of 350 of my close and, not so close, friends and associates a description of the experience I’d just had. Now that’s a whole lot more people than I could have told before Facebook!

Tweet to all my contacts a (very short!) description of my experience and tag Pizza Express’ Twitter account in the post so that anyone following their profile could find out about my experience. Probably resulting in 1000’s of people viewing the tweet.

Go on to Trip Advisor, write a review and rate my experience at this particular Pizza Express for everyone to see. So next time someone in my area is thinking of visiting a Pizza Express they may very well have a quick look on Trip Advisor and decide otherwise.

Now this is just 3 of the many social networking tools and methods I could have used to tell others about my experience but it goes to show the reach and power I have as a consumer to tell others about my experience.

HOW DOES THIS AFFECT HOW A BUSINESS SHOULD REACT?

Firstly, although rather cliché, it’s better to be pro-active than to be reacting all the time. A good brand will focus on providing the highest level of service whenever possible to minimise the amount of bad experiences that a customer has with them. I didn’t actually do any of the above after my experience because, having been to Pizza Express at least 5 or 6 times this year I understood that their service is usually a lot better and I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

There is an element of reacting involved though and what the advent of social media means for brands is that consumers expectations of reaction times when something does go wrong are much shorter than they used to be – hence the ‘always on’ tag. 

Whether you run a restaurant and have had a bad night, run a manufacturing business that’s run into a bit of a PR disaster, or run a service-based B2B business and have received a customer complaint, the customer now expects an almost instant reaction.

Ok, so having someone scouring social media websites and responding to customer complaints 24 hours isn’t practical for most businesses but effective use of social media tools to engage with your audience and a more effective approach to reacting to situations can go a long way.

APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TIMES

Although I didn’t go on a social media tirade against Pizza Express after Sunday evening, I did send a complaint email through their website just to see how long it took them to get back to me and to judge how this matched up with my expectations of a reasonable timescale.

That was on Monday morning and I still haven’t received anything as of yet, which is around 72 hours as I publish this post. To be honest, I was expecting to receive something the same day but would have accepted anything up to 24 hours.

So really, Pizza Express has gone down in my estimations, possibly in yours having read this and I could have reached a whole lot more people as I’ve talked about above.

Would I go back? I think I’ll give them one more chance since there American Hot pizza is so good!

Think about how ‘always on’ will affect your business and if you need any further advice give us a call.

WHAT IS THE NEW GROUP FEATURE ALL ABOUT AND WILL IT TAKE OFF?

Last week Facebook launched their all-new Groups format, which could really change the way we all use and interact with each other on social networking sites.

There have always been Groups on Facebook and, a little over a year ago, they also launched Pages, which seemed and were very similar to Groups. There were only a few differences between both of these formats and it essentially boiled down to the fact that Pages couldn’t use mass messaging to members but Groups could.

Clearly though the launch of Pages was part of a longer-term strategy. The introduction of the new Groups feature makes it more obvious that Pages are designed for companies to use for brand building and consumer engagement whereas Groups are designed to more reflect a ‘real-life’ networking experience for groups of Facebook users.

TIP: IF YOU’RE SETTING UP A FACEBOOK PRESENCE FOR YOUR COMPANY USE A ‘PAGE’ AND NOT A ‘GROUP’

Essentially Groups allows you to split up your overall friend base into smaller groups of people that more closely represent your real-life friend base.  For instance if you play in a sports team then you might create a group for that or you may choose to create a group for all of your work friends or all of your closest of mates. Within these groups there is Group Chat, Docs (where a group can collaborate and edit a document simultaneously and in real-time) and Mailing List where instant update notifications are sent to each group member.

OK, SO WHY IS THIS A BIG DEAL?

A major and growing criticism of Facebook is that, as it has an increasing part to play in our everyday lives, it treats all of your ‘friends’ as one. Sure, you don’t mind your closest friends seeing your status updates, photos, relationship status, where you have last ‘checked in’ and what events you are attending, but do you really want your work colleagues, boss or family to see this exact same information? Most people don’t and it boils down to one major point:

In real life we have many different networks but in reality they rarely ever mix. On Facebook they all merge into one.

On average every person has around 5 completely different networks of people in their lives. For instance let’s use myself as an example. I (roughly) have:

- Close friends

- Family

- Work colleagues

- Business contacts/clients

- Friends that share a common interest in Formula 1

With the exception of the Formula 1 group (where there is a mix of people in this group from each of the other networks), the groups don’t overlap. I don’t work with any of my closest friends, my closest friends aren’t closely related to my family, my family don’t have anything in common with clients or business contacts and so on.

Not only do these different networks have little in common, I also don’t want to share the same amount and type of information with each of them. I might want to share a funny comment or post up photos of last weekend’s party but I might now want to share this with clients and business contacts also. To turn it the other way round, I don’t really want to talk about and share business information with my close friends or family because they are not related to my work life and have no interest in it.

So I begin to self-censor, only sharing information that ‘pleases’ everyone and, in doing that, I am actually watering down the social experience I have on websites such as Facebook.

This presents a major problem for Facebook because, as it has a bigger and bigger part to play in our lives, it needs to take into account the differences in our separate network of friends and contacts.

So, although there are other reasons behind it, this is why Facebook has launched these all-new Groups. Groups are still very much in their infancy at the moment but the big picture for Facebook is to provide an easy, intuitive way to share specific information with specific groups of ‘friends’.

WILL IT TAKE OFF?

There is an ongoing argument about whether or not this will take off. There are 2 major factors pulling against each other in this case:

As I said above people don’t want to share everything with everyone

Facebook has a very voyeuristic element to it. One of the major reasons it took off in the first place is because people like to find out all this information about people they know. The truth is though, in many cases people actually like to know this information about people that they don’t know THAT well. You already know pretty much everything about your close friends anyway but not those ‘friends’ that are really friends-of-friends or loose acquaintances.

The argument is that by, over-time, removing this ‘share with all’ social experience, it will actually diminish the reason people used it in the first place.

In my opinion I think it’s almost too close to call but I think that Groups will win in the end. As I said, this is an early first attempt for Facebook so it might not take off right away but it is the way things will move in the coming months and years.

WHAT’S THE IMPACT FOR BUSINESSES USING FACEBOOK AS A MARKETING TOOL?

The truth is, no one knows! This, I’m afraid, is a case of wait and see. Could brands also have to start further segmenting the groups of people they engage with on social networks? Quite possibly but we need to first of all see what the uptake is amongst users before judging what the impact for businesses will be.

The fact that Pages were launched last year as a brand-building tool for companies maybe suggests that maybe Facebook see companies as a separate entity to the idea of Groups – who knows, we’ll wait and see. 

All very exciting though!

Whether it is in one of our webinars, workshops or when in the early stages of building a marketing plan for a new client, we always talk about the benefits of identifying hidden marketers.

By this we mean finding people in your business that, at the moment, aren’t directly involved in marketing in the slightest but that could actually be perfect to carry out certain marketing tasks set out in your marketing plan. In our experience, creative people are hiding in every department within your organisation and if you take the time to identify them and get them on board with marketing, the results can be fantastic.

Not only that but it can really save you money over and above having to pay a marketing company to do these tasks for you. This might sound a bit funny coming from a company that specialize in marketing support and outsourcing but really it makes sense to only use your marketing company for expertise when you need them and find the time and creative flair internally to be able to keep down those costs.

But how do you actually identify these people? It’s not about finding someone in your business that’s a marketing genius but just happens to be working in accounts or on the shop floor - it’s about finding people that have the ability to be able to carry out small parts of your marketing plan and giving them the responsibility to take care of it.

Here’s a great example:

One of our clients was interested in adding social media marketing into the plan we were delivering for them. We pulled together a full social media strategy and put everything in place to get it going. The thing with social media marketing is that you can’t just create a Facebook page and leave it to ‘go viral’ – it’s all about interaction, building up a user base and providing information that’s of genuine interest to them. So there’s a lot of ongoing time and effort that you need to spend to run a social media campaign. Inevitably it would cost more money for our client to pay us to do this than if they could identify someone in the business who had the time and ability to do it.

When we talked to our client about this they were initially stuck – they couldn’t think of anyone. Until someone mentioned that they had recently banned social media sites in the office – mainly because the receptionist was never off them!

Needless to say the receptionist was identified as someone who could help deliver the social media campaign and, guess what, she loved it and the results we’re great. Our client saved money by not having to use our time to manage the day-to-day running of the campaign and the receptionist really got on board and delivered – mainly because she felt a sense of responsibility and enjoyed the fact that she was the only one in the office allowed to go on social media sites!

So it’s not about finding a marketing guru in disguise, it’s about identifying people that can help with certain marketing tasks in your business.

Let us know how you get on and if you don’t have any luck you know we’ll still be happy to let you outsource all you marketing to us!