Future of Marketing Communication

According to the 2015 Meaningful Brands research by Havas, most people would not care if 74% of all brands disappeared for good. This should be a wake-up call for the majority of brands. The marketing landscape is continuously changing and digital technology is developing faster than ever. It will come as no surprise, that some businesses fail to keep up with these trends.

Most of the problems that brands face nowadays result from problems in marketing communication. Many marketers have not updated their strategies to today's consumers who are more demanding in terms of customers service, less loyal to favorite brands and more resistant to traditional marketing messages.

Social media is a digital reflection of today's consumers' lives. Platforms like Facebook or Twitter are a natural environment, especially for the young users. They spent a massive amount of time there. These digital networks are constantly adjusting to evolving consumers to meet their expectations and make them spend even more time on social media. Social platforms are sources for news, information about friends and entertainment. They let users express themselves, share their experiences and views, interact with others and ask for opinions.

It creates a wide space for brands to step in and communicate with clients and prospects. Users leave lots of information about their interests and preferences. Marketers who do not listen their audiences miss the opportunity to reach out to the most promising leads.

Internet users create over 30,000 mentions with "where can I buy" phrase monthly. Social listening tools enable you to collect such comments in one place and then reach out to prospects. It is one of the most effective channels for generating sales. Leads that you collect with social listening are authentically interested in particular products or services and what's more important these prospects express their demand publicly. If you reply directly to a user who ask for recommendation chances are he or she will settle on your product.

According to the Brand Storytelling Report 2015 by Headstream, more than a half of consumers are more likely to buy a product in the future if they really love a brand story. People want to hear stories about real humans, stories they can relate to. Relevant stories that speak to consumers make brands meaningful. On top of that, they can go viral, giving brands organic recommendations that are more trustworthy than any other corporate messages. Emotional marketing helps businesses to stand out in the highly competitive market.

Apple flipped their marketing strategy. They don't sell computers. They offer a way of thinking and a challenge to the status quo, by making their products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. It just happen they fulfill this vision by making computers.

Other meaningful brands start with the why as well. Coke doesn't sell soda, they offer happiness, Universal Music doesn't sell songs, they give you emotions and moments. Redefinition of marketing strategy can change the way people perceive a brand and bring them around to its offer.

Consumers, especially the young ones, often don't trust brands any longer. Corporations no longer have a big impact on customer behavior and their preferences. Traditional advertising is not effective as it used to be a few years back. People use ad blocking and if not, they unconsciously tuning traditional ads out.

That's why Internet users are more willing to trust a favorite blogger rather than a recommendation from a brand. Thus, bloggers and other influencers have the power of shaping consumer opinions. They are more credible to today's audiences.

Word of month has always been a valuable source for customer acquisition and retention. However, with social media development it moved to a different level. Recommendations have no longer one-to-one character. Everyone with Internet access can reach out to broad audiences. If a user happen to be influential on social media, he or she has a powerful weapon of shaping customers opinions in hands.

Therefore, more and more brands started to leverage this channel in fixed marketing strategy. Influencer marketing brings measurable results to businesses. For instance, a cosmetic brand managed to significantly improve sentiment structure within 18 months (graph), since they started to cooperate with influencers.

Somersby incorporated influencer marketing in their strategy as well. They have cooperated with bloggers on regular basis for many years. It helped them improve online image and improve sales results.

If you work in marketing you should never stop learning. Follow trends and always listen to your audience. Your clients and prospects is the most valuable brand asset you can ever earn and also a rich source for insights that will help your business to grow.

Agencies will Become Educators

Teaching will be another model that will continue to take shape. More specifically, teaching people and companies. Not keeping the secret sauce secret. This means educating and enabling as opposed to controlling (practice what you preach, right?).

This means agencies/consultants, etc. will continue to create their own content online and off.

Perhaps it is monthly events in your home town where you invite out business owners and marketers.

And in many ways, this content can be monetized directly. Perhaps instead of clients, you have subscribers and create a community. A membership site or a mentoring program.

The end result is part publisher and part agency.

Most branded content will come from consumers. User generated content will far exceed branded content and brands need to embrace this and accept they aren’t in complete control of their own brand. As such, it’s imperative that brands create a strong identity in the minds and hearts of consumers. 

Here are some of the traits that will be seen in Consumer, Markets and Suppliers:

• Small Screen versus Big Screen versus Screen on demand (The latter being my bet for handling the new complex consumer). Mobility will still have its part, but don’t just think of Mobility being small device.
• Pinpoint narrowcast profiling versus Viral broadcast
• Knowledgeable Consumers
• Immediacy of transactions and how the Profile wants to transact
• Increased Collaboration to live your life and high levels of independence
• Decentralisation of where people live and more reliance on Screen-based technologies.
• Consumers creating their own marketing opportunities
• Consumers as Advertisers of their own content
• 3D printing conceptual information and holography
• Consumers will want to ‘Find’ an answer on demand, not ‘Search’, but we should expect this to be automated
• Consumers lives will be more chaotic, so will need convenience providers to help them trade ‘time’ for money or favours
• Applications will be more Consumer-centric rather than Consumers being driven to SM alters. Consumer will want to have ‘My Life’ on a screen which will help them coordinate their lives.
• Big Data will be transparent, but Big Information will be the focus for Consumers.
• Be prepared to pay-per-view the Consumer directly to listen to your Marketing Communications as a shared model with the Tool provider. A new ecosystem will evolve.
• Attention span will be less, but there will be a rapid Judge and Execution
• Consumers own Video’s will be routes/channels for your Marketing Communications and tools will become available to make that happen
• Consumer profiles will be Real-time, but only if they want you to see it (intense Privacy laws)
• Consumers will use SaaS to build their life style tools.
• Consumers will demand/expect very high Content quality and highly intuitive.

Sources:

Natalia Chrzanowska, Smart Insights, 2016

URL:http://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/integrated-marketing-communications/4-trends-will-change-marketing-communication-2016/

Brad Hogan 2016, URL:http://www.therisetothetop.com/davids-blog/5-predictions-future-marketing-pr-advertising-agencies/

Dugdale consulting, Word Press 2016, 

URL:https://dugdaleconsulting.com/2014/02/18/marketing-communications-and-the-future-a-view/

transforming marketing ideas into messages

Idea Generating Process

Def: The process of creating, developing, and communicating ideas which are abstract, concrete, or visual. The process includes the process of constructing through the idea, innovating the concept, developing the process, and bringing the concept to reality. (business dictionary)

Tools and techniques for creation process

One technique involves getting into groups and coming up with ideas, known as brainstorming, and this is a tried and true method. This technique has many variations. Some teams use a traditional brainstorming approach and simply let their minds wander while they speak up whenever something promising occurs to them or by passing papers with ideas written so that others can physically add to the group thinking. Other teams may utilize a modified approach where they think of ideas that achieve the opposite of their desired outcome to get thinking out of the box.

One techniques is to save discussion for later where the team is presented with the problem to solve and then sent back to work on other tasks while allowing the new problem and possible ideas to develop in the back of their minds for a given amount of time.

Story boarding or making picture illustrations to help develop new ideas and find solutions is a valuable visual technique. New insights can be reached when thinking about a task.

To encourage active participation and thinking role playing or having employees work out in a specific scenario can be employed for idea generation. (study.com)

How people perceive the message?

Stages of perception in Marketing

Sensation
Sensation describes what occurs when a person's senses are initially exposed to the external stimulus of a product or brand marketing. The sensory receptors of a consumer are engaged by product or brand cues through sight, sound, smell, taste and texture. For example, Starbucks engages all the senses in its sensory brand marketing. A customer who enters a Starbucks coffee shop may hear the sounds and smell the aroma of the grinding of fresh coffee in the store. Background music and a unique store design round out the experience of the taste of hot or cold coffee and food products that can be enjoyed in-store at quaint cafe tables.

Attention
In consumer information processing, attention occurs when a person lingers and gives mental processing capacity to the external stimulus from a product or brand. Selective perception is when a consumer pays attention to messages that are consistent with her attitudes, beliefs and needs. When a product is inconsistent with these factors, the consumer will withdraw attention.

Interpretation
Interpretation occurs when a person assigns a meaning to the sensory stimulus from a product or brand marketing. Comprehension is aided by expectations and familiarity. A consumer scans his memory to retrieve previous experiences with the brand or a similar brand. Store-brand marketing frequently capitalizes on the interpretation stage when product packaging design contains logos, colors and other elements that are similar to national brands that consumers are generally more familiar with.

Retention
The conclusion of the consumer perception process is the retention stage. This is marked by the storage of product or brand information in short-term and long-term memory. The marketer's goal is to provide positive stimuli in the proceeding stages that translate into consumers storing the information about the product or brand into long-term memory.

(chron.com)

How to align created idea according to objectives?

• Develop your content strategy based on corporate goals and research.
• Create a content strategy that is based on themes that matter to your audience — but that intersect with what you offer — and detail the goals at the highest and lowest levels.
• Lay out a plan that specifies how you will execute your content marketing strategy. (contentmarketinginstitute.com)

Sources:

http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-idea-generation-definition-process-techniques.html
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_97.htm
https://www.cleverism.com/18-best-idea-generation-techniques/

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/stages-perception-marketing-22161.html

http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/02/coca-colas-content-strategy-lessons-for-marketers/

Media Agencies and Selecting the Media Mix

Selecting the right Media Mix

Know how your audience and where they receive their information: Selling your product or service is your ultimate goal, so you must know who your target audience is and how they like to receive their information – is it magazines, websites, newsletters, podcasts, webinars, tradeshows? One way to help learn about your online audiences is to use Google Analytics, which offers powerful insight into the behavior of visitors to your website. You can use it to identify which sites visitors come from, what their demographics are, which content they view the most, and how loyal and engaged they are. Once you analyze the behavior of your audience and know where they are tapped into, you can identify the correct channels to reach them.

Match your product/service with the right media: Once you know your audience, it’s critical to make sure you are matching your efforts to the right media since certain media have more appeal to different groups. When you know which media specialize in your specific niche, it makes it easier for you to get quality coverage because you’re giving them stories they are already looking for. For example, a hot new mobile app company might want to focus on targeting online media sources frequently visited by a mobile-savvy audience rather than radio or TV sources. 

Continually evaluate your media mix: Once you have followed steps one and two above and have a solid understanding of which your best audiences and media outlets are, you must continually evaluate the effectiveness of your mix. Trends, opinions and perceptions change constantly, and your chosen media mix will not be immune to this. By actively evaluating and researching your media mix, you can identify patterns and implement adjustments as your audience and their preferred media outlets change to ensure your mix continues to make the best impact for your efforts. ( Pan communications)

How Do Media Agencies search their target audience

Interactive marketing is a one to one marketing process that reacts and changes based on the actions of individual customers and prospects. This ability to react to the actions of customers and prospects means that trigger based marketing is dramatically more effective than normal direct marketing.
It depends on customers expressing their preferences in order for marketers to respond to their needs in an appropriate way and produce applicable marketing measures (Marketing schools, 2012). The capability to address a consumer and the ability to collect and retain their response are the two fundamental features of interactive marketing communications. Interactivity is therefore seen as a tool that allows good marketing to result in good communication (Sorrell et al., 1996).

Intermedia And Intramedia
Intramedia is competition between media within the same type of medium whereas Intermedia is competition between different media types. 

Google books 

Media Studies: Policy, management and media representation

By Pieter J. Fourie

Word of Mouth is a powerful thing and it’s rife amongst social media folk, so connecting with those that are connected to your target audiences can be worthwhile.
Then think about who these people are, which industries they work in, what they like, what they read, what motivates them, age ranges, personality traits, where they hang out, technical know-how, how likely they are to use social media. Really do your research and segment your audiences by creating profiles for them. You may uncover some less obvious people that could be great for you. Keep a record of this, a simple spreadsheet will do, and make sure you review and update it, adding others as necessary.


Also identify your key influencers. These could be people that stand out within your communities, people that others listen to, people that create action (not necessarily those people with thousands of Twitter followers). They could be peers, journalists, thought-leaders or other stakeholders. People with game-changing opinion and ideas. People who challenge the norm. Or simply people that talk sense.

The types of audiences you could be looking for include:

• Current clients or customers
• Potential clients or customers
• Associates of current/potential clients or customers
• Journalists and editors
• Bloggers
• Suppliers
• Affiliate businesses
• Thought-leaders

If you don’t know who these people are, make the most of the various free monitoring tools to track who is talking about the keywords associated with your business: such as Google Analytics, Social Mention, Delicious and Board Reader. This should highlight who has a voice in these subject areas.

Once you’ve profiled the people you want to connect with, you need to find them. This is an on-going process and takes a little time. This will give you a good idea of which social platforms you should have a presence on, so keep your mind open to niche sites as well as the big guns.

As for finding people, there are a bunch of tools you can use to help you find them on the main social networks:
How to find people on Twitter
Search.twitter.com is a favourite. It has a wide criteria range to search on, including location (handy for local businesses). Also use this tool to find the key influencers in your industry and browse their follower/following lists. You could find some great people to connect with there.
Twitterrel lets you find people talking about related topics.
Twellow is the Twitter equivalent of the Yellow Pages, a directory sorted by occupation.
Just Tweet It is a directory sorted by interest.
Tweepz help you find people nearby.
Also pay attention to hashtags being used for events, you could find some great people there.
How to find people on LinkedIn
Search for the names of those people you’ve already identified by name using LinkedIn’s search box. Also make the most of the advanced search feature.
You can also use this search box to search for keywords that will be included in profiles. Make the most of using OR or AND in these searches to include a few keywords (OR allows you to look for any one of those terms in the profile, AND allows you to look for a number of words).
You can also search for people using their email addresses.
Join groups that fit your interests or industry. Once you’ve been accepted as a member, browse the member lists and find people with shared interests that you want to connect with.
Use the Questions and Answer function to start a conversation around your key subject area. You’ll find those people interested in this subject will respond to you, after which you can connect with them.

You can’t simply choose to connect with people on LinkedIn as you can with Twitter. They need to give their approval (which I’m a fan of), so if they’re connected to you through someone you’re connected to, request to be introduced to them.
Know Where Your Customers Spend Their Time

Three recent research studies show active Internet users spend anywhere from 16% to nearly 25% of their online time on social networks.
Find Content That Will Resonate Deeply With Your Audience

The comScore graphic above shows an upward trend in online entertainment consumption. Given the growing numbers of consumers ages 18-34 who watch videos and engage on social networks simultaneously, it is important for marketers to become skilled at engaging in conversations about hot cultural topics seen in the entertainment industry.

Nielsen’s study revealed that owners of mobile devices are increasingly multi-taskingwhile watching a TV program. While the majority of people check their email, a significant 44% also visit social sites.



By socialmediaexaminer.com

Sources
http://blog.prspeak.com/blog/3-tactics-for-picking-the-right-media-mix
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com