Kenyon Blunt, SIGMA CEO, shares his ten marketing trends to watch in 2012. He touches on everything from touchpoint attribution to the death of email marketing, and much in between. What trends will you watch for marketing this year that you might add to Kenyon's top ten?

2. Things change…
…including the way we need to
look at marketing.
Here are 10 Marketing
Trends to think about…

3. Trend #1:
The customer is still king.
This one is left off many of the lists out
there today. As good marketers, we
should remember the customer is, after
all, still behind all of the following nine
marketing trends. I am the customer
I want…
We have to get rid of our “campaign” what I want,
mentality and learn to think about when I want it.
engaging customers with meaningful
dialogue and deliver relevant content,
and do all of this in a timely fashion.

4. Trend #2:
Big Data is getting
Bigger.
The line between technology companies (big data) and marketing continues
to blur. We have all heard that the amount of digital data is doubling every
two years.
What is important is looking at the customer interactions over time. It does
not have to be just big technology companies that can harness the data and
use it for marketing.
New technologies and cloud computing have opened up all sorts of
possibilities for smaller marketers as well.

5. Trend #3:
SoLoMo: a new and powerful combination.
Are we being overly inventive by getting social, local and mobile combined in one
trend? Google’s Matt Cutts coined this term but it’s probably better explained by a recent
example on Black Friday of this year. The New York Times reported that advertisers lured
customers away and stole competitor sales while they were waiting on line to make a
purchase – an awesome combination of social, local and mobile all being used together.

6. Trend #4:
Cloud computing helps marketers too.
Cloud computing
helps marketers by giving us more
accessibility to new technologies, reducing
costs of marketing infrastructure
(like servers and storage), easier scalability and
low barriers to entry, which enables a more
uniform playing field.

7. Trend #5:
Show me the money.
Dave Frankland from Forrester Research
recently called the tight budgets we’re seeing
“post-recession austerity.” This trend should
continue in 2012 as marketers face tight
budgets and increased demand to show
ROI. That’s
especially true
with emerging
media like
social, which
has matured
and now needs
to be evaluated
for return on
investment just
like other
channels.

8. Trend #6:
Email’s death is greatly exaggerated.
Spam filters and the threat of an opt-out registry haven’t
dampened the growth of email. In a recent interactive
marketing forecast, Forrester predicted that email
spending will continue to grow by 10% during the next
several years, but marketers will focus the campaigns
more using analytics. B2B companies echo this forecast
as we continue to see more dollars earmarked for email
and lead generating programs.

9. Trend #7:
The world has gone app crazy.
The proliferation of smart phones
and tablets has made us go app
crazy. And it’s not just applications
like Facebook, Twitter and Angry
Birds; people are using them for
business applications. For example,
the app Evernote was used to store
clipped data and emails in order to
write bring this content together.
George Colony, the CEO of Forrester,
recently proclaimed that the
internet was dead and that
applications are taking over.

10. Trend #8:
Attribution is the holy grail of marketing.
Was it a leap last year to include touchpoint
attribution as a top marketing trend in
2011?
When explained to marketers that
attributing success to the right channel or
channels is key to effective use of marketing
dollars (especially with more and more
multichannel campaigns), their eyes light up
and the quest for more information on
attribution begins.
In a recent study by Unica, marketers said
their top two priorities are “turning data
into actions” and “attributing success to
marketing.”

11. Trend #9:
Content marketing takes off.
We’ve known that relevant content has always been important
to drive web traffic, but blogs, case studies and white papers
are now being considered an important part of the marketing
mix.
As social media matures, marketers will need to provide visitors to
Facebook or Twitter with meaningful content to get fans to return.

12. Trend #10:
Right touching
– right time
multichannel
marketing
This is a bit complicated to explain in a cursory fashion, but
conversations and customer interactions that are taking
place in social media are being harvested by social listening
platforms.
These dialogues are being turned into campaigns that drive
the right offer to the right buyer at the right time. Sounds
simple, huh?

13. While these trends
may or may not be
around next year, I
can assure you that
the changes we’ll see
in 2012 will make our
lives as marketers
very exciting.

14. Contact Us: 888-277-9837
Web: sigmamarketing.com
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