Marketing Trend News

Posts Tagged ‘trends’

The Client Freak-Out
I get a 10:00 pm call from a client freaking out. His holiday sales are down and he needs some kind of help. I ask how much email marketing he’s been doing. His response? “Huh?”  Long pause. Silence. More pause. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just drive over to his house and bonk him on the head like a Three Stooges movie. When I gain my composure, I say the gentlest thing I can. “Bro, seriously, that was soooo not the right answer.” We have a little talk with some weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and I finally tell him to take two bulk emails, get some sleep, and call me in the morning.

Email Solution
As some of you might have guessed, just about noon the next day, his phone starts to ring with new customers. But why? The answer is very simple; email marketing works. For online marketing, it brings some of the fastest possible ROI. The big boys of retail know this. Of major national retailers, 55% will be focusing on email marketing during the holidays this years. Even more amazing, 75% of small businesses will be increasing their spending on email marketing for 2010.

Things to Remember
You’re still dealing with sheer numbers as well as a lot of other marketing factors, so don’t send out a lame email, and don’t send 3 to your favorite cousin and his dog Sparky, and expect to get sales. You have to be sensible. Send out a fair amount,  make sure they have a clear and compelling message, and make sure your site supports the message of the email. If you can do all of this, then most people can expect to see some decent, and fast, ROI.

Time to Get Busy
There’s still time to shoot out a few emails before Christmas if you haven’t done this yet. Don’t forget, there are After Christmas Sales, New Year’s Sales, January Blow Out Sales, and all kinds of good excuses to send out a lot more seasonal email.

If you haven’t done it yet, get that email flying, there’s still time. For more details about putting the email and the landing page together, I’ll have an upcoming article.

Double your productivity with handy Acme Clone Service.

Soon YOU will be online 48/7. That is an actual statistical trend. So, um, is that whole cloning thing finally taking off?

YES!

Sorry, just kidding. If you got cloned, then your spouse would want to get cloned, and then the kids would all want to get cloned, and then they’d want the dog cloned, and the guppies cloned. The reason we aren’t  geting cloned isn’t because we can’t, it’s because nobody wants two husbands scratching and burping, or two wives nagging about the scratching and burping. And really, who’d blame them? So if we aren’t getting cloned, then what does 48/7 mean?

It’s all about the number of hours each day you’re connected to the internet. So we have 48 hours in a day now? Well, sort of.  It’s measuring the total number of hours you’re connected, adding up all the hours from all your internet devices. So if you have a computer running backups, and a smart phone, and an internet enabled T.V., that’s a lot of hours of connectivity. According to a recent article in PCWorld, by 2013 we’ll each have 48 hours a day of total connectivity. Wow. What’s ever wowier? We already have 36 hours of connectivity per person. Really. I could not make this up.

That’s insane. So what does that mean for the average business? It’s a big picture concept. It’s something you need to keep in the back of your head all the time. We have never been hooked up to a technology this way. This is new ground. Just because you’re getting used to it doesn’t mean we’re done. It’s growing, it’s expanding, and it’s moving fast. The things coming in the next decade are mind blowing. But even right now, you need to dig in hard.

Your clients are wired around the clock. Your vendors and suppliers are wired around the clock. Your sales people, marketers, distributors… all wired around the clock. Their spouses, children, social contacts… all the things that affect their time and mental state, for good or bad… all wired around the clock. Your COMPETITION is all wired around the clock. And somewhere, somebody is trying to knock you out of business, and they’re hiring web marketers to figure out how to do it. And THEY are working around the clock.

You’d be surprised how many people are really connected. I recently came in contact with the chieftain of a native tribe living in the middle of a jungle, with huts and everything… he needed web development. I swear to you this is true. We haven’t exactly closed a deal, as I only need so many wild pigs and native girls.  But this is a guy who understands the world he’s in. Just because you live in a hut in the jungle doesn’t make you stupid. In fact, all of this great technology is going to allow people like that to preserve their lifestyle, because internet technology isn’t like a bulldozer. It gives you a lot of options in business.

If this guy in the middle of the jungle, who lives in a hut, and paddles a canoe to work, understands the world… then why don’t we?

Everyone is connected. Everyone is connected more hours, more ways, more places, than we realize, and it’s only going to increase. Don’t take it for granted, and don’t ever think you’re connected enough.  Every little change in tech is multiplying our time and connections even more; it’s cloning us. If you don’t get cloned, your competition will.

Everybody I know is tired of hearing about Web 2.0. But some people are determined to shoot themselves in the foot with very old bullets. Here’s what happened this week.

Where transportation is headed.

That Mule Doesn’t Look So Good

There I was, tearing through marketing sites this week,  searching for treasure, poking, digging, muttering, like one of those crazy old miners lost in the desert. Right before I went completely nuts and started talking to my pack mule, I hit gold. I found a link to a new marketing guy! Time for big ideas, fresh insights, the latest cutting of edges.  I’m all excited.  I pat the mule on the head, grab some coffee, and sit back to enjoy my haul.

As soon as I brush the dust off the site and take a good look, guess what I see? Web 2.0! He’s a Web 2.0 expert! Wow. And nobody in the universe knows Web 2.0 like he knows Web 2.0! He has Web 2.0 books, Web 2.0 videos, Web 2.0 courses, Web 2.0 consulting, and several sites with “Web 2.0″ right in the name.  Not only that, but he’s building more Web 2.0 stuff every day. If you’re really smart you’ll get out that wallet and jump on his stuff quick! This guy really is the king of all things Web 2.0.

There’s just one problem. Uhhh… Web 2.0 was old news like 5 years ago. In internet years that’s older than Methuselah. It’s like selling a mule AFTER it fell over dead, after it got good and ripe, and after the coyotes nibbled it down to the bone, and then the sun came out and bleached the bones blinding white like your granny’s favorite set of teeth.

How You Got the Mule

So is this guy insane? Well… in a word, yes. For the non techies, let me clear things up. The phrase “Web 2.0″ was coined by a brilliant marketing guy, and his friends, back in 2004. After the big Dot Com Bust they were trying to think of some ways to get people to seminars, and get the general public excited about the internet again.

They looked at emerging technologies (primarily Ajax) and at emerging trends (primarily social networking and  ”internet OS”) and they came up with the concept of Web 2.0. Basically they were thinking of it as the answer to the Dot Com Bust. To them it meant the “second coming” of the internet. Instead of the internet being over, they knew it was just taking off in new exciting ways, and they wanted a way to describe it.

So Web 2.0 is just a marketing term used to excite interest about some trends which were emerging five years ago.  These trends and technologies were not futuristic, they were already being used back then. They were at least developed well enough, 5 years ago,  that these marketing guys could coin a phrase to describe them. So they weren’t really that fresh back then. But the public didn’t know much about them.

My Mule Never Felt So Old

These things seemed so new back then, that they really seemed futuristic. But now they are just basic, ordinary things we all take for granted. They are so common place now we actually just ignore them.  So telling somebody you’re going to teach them about the exciting new world of Web 2.0 is like telling your teenager, “If you’re good, I’ll teach you how to turn on the television, or use the microwave, or maybe even dial the phone!” THAT is what Web 2.0 has become.

I can’t help thinking that my new friend, the “Master of Web 2.0″ is probably going to lose so much business pretty soon that he’ll be  jumping off a building. (He’ll probably call it suicide 2.0.) Things just change so fast now. It’s just like ox carts. Yes, I really said ox carts. You see, you could probably sell ox carts someplace in Mongolia, and say they’re the newest thing in transportation. Even though they’ve been around awhile,  you’ll probably still sell some. But one morning somebody is going to drive past your clients in a Pontiac.  Done. You just sold your very last ox cart.  On the internet, five years is the difference between ox carts and Pontiacs.

Keeping a Better Breed of Mules

So what do you do? It’s really not about products; it’s about the technology the products use. You can’t tie yourself so closely to things which can be “dated”, like specific technologies and buzz words. When you create your product lines, and names, and marketing plans, use a broader approach. Don’t be the guy who sells “lead paint”, just be the guy who sells “paint”. If the technologies change you’re ok. Don’t be the guy who sells “rotary phones”, just be the guy who sells “phones”. If you talk-up a technology as a selling point, be sure the core of your company, and the core of your marketing, is built on something more stable and durable. This is especially needed in technology fields, where everything will keep changing so quickly.

So what about the guy building his whole company on the term “Web 2.0″? Well, he’s a marketer, and he’s building his marketing business on a fairly nebulous buzz word. Now nebulous can be ok, but the problem is that the word is dated.  He should have sold himself as a “marketer”, and then qualified that by saying he keeps up with all the latest stuff. Then he could have specified what the lastest stuff was. Then he could have just gone  about calmly, and switched  technologies in and out of his portfolio as needed. He would have stayed above the fray.  Right now, every single thing he does, every book, video etc., is exclusively about Web 2.0. When Web 3.0 comes, (or whatever displaces web 2.0 conceptually) he has to throw all his products in the trash. He has to throw his websites in the trash. He even  has to throw his reputation in the trash, because it too is built exclusively on one thing, Web 2.0.

Dressing Your Mule For Success

Just for fun, how soon do you think Web 3.0 will come out? Remember these are just marketing buzz words, so you can call anything Web 3.0. But just for fun, I googled Web 3.0 and found  people writing about it all the way back in 2006.  Again, it just shows how dated Web 2.0 really is. Some guys would never even drive last year’s car, but they’d drive some worn out old marketing buzz. I know some hot marketing girls who would never wear last years hose, or shoes, or lipstick, but they’d make their company wear a bunch of dated marketing hype.

I used to have a bunch of neon T-shirts from a decade I won’t even mention. My fiancee at the time just went through my closet, and tossed them all out. She didn’t even apologize. Why? Because I looked like an idiot. I thought I looked cool. I thought moth balls existed so you could preserve your clothes and wear the same shirts for ever and ever. She just looked at me and said I still looked like an idiot. If you want to wear something horrendously dated, that’s fine. But just realize what you’ve done. Don’t try to tell your girlfriend how clever you are, and don’t try to tell the cool kids you’re one of them. It’s the same with your business. Don’t plaster something on your business that makes you look stupid.  Just say no.

So what do you do? In technology you don’t have to know everything, but you better know what the trends are. You better know if you’re wearing last decade’s stuff. Read, ask questions, stay aware. This stuff will NEVER stand still for you. Old movies are cool, old music is cool, old furniture is cool; lots of old things are cool…  but old technology is never cool.  And you can bet your favorite pack mule  or ox cart on that.

Jon has big plans for Kate's birthday.

The Appeal of Imminent Death

Imagine this:
You and your lovely wife hate each other, and 10 MILLION people tune in to watch! To watch what exactly? The gore! It’s like NASCAR, but with screaming children instead of screaming engines. The fans are in the bleachers, binoculars in hand, straining to see which of you will kill the other one first by dropping a toaster into the bathtub. It just doesn’t get any better than that.  It’s like the War of the Roses, but it’s real! Maybe.

Whatever it is, it’s money in the bank. You’ve heard the expression “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”? Well here it is in the flesh. I don’t recommend this business model for everybody. This theory says attention equals money, no matter how you get the attention. But we’ll get to the downside later. For now, lets just soak up all the good Jon and Kate vibes.

Doom is Great T.V.

So what’s really going on with Jon and Kate? Are they going to divorce? Are they really unhappy? Can they work things out? Should they call Dr. Phil? Have they tried meditation, or the ab roller, or coffee enemas? Can anything save them? What if Mother Theresa was still alive? What if  President Obama could give them “hope”? What if  Dick Cheney could frighten them into being good? What if they did Wrestle Mania with the Octo Mom? What if they ate their babies like fish? What if, what if, what if… I really don’t care.  I’m just waiting for that toaster to fall.  The whole country is waiting for the toaster to fall. THAT is television, and they know it.

I imagine it will get even better before it all gets cancelled. Can you imagine the ratings when Jon is on top of the Post Office with a sniper rifle? Maybe he’ll saw the house in two with a chainsaw. (A guy getting divorced did that once.) I see nothing but money in their future, but not if they actually separate. They have to stay together, and kill each other week after week.  But unlike NASCAR, there doesn’t need to be a winner…  just bathtubs and toasters.

Controversy Jingles Like Money

So why am I being so mean? I’m not, I’m just pointing out how much money you can make with a little controversy if you play your cards right. If you watch the media closely, you’ll see contrived controversy all the time. Big corporations do it, politicians do it, sometimes our own children do it. It’s all around us. Creating really great controversy isn’t a trend, it’s an art form. But there may be more artists than there used to be, and THAT is a trend.

So with Jon and Kate, is it all contrived? With these guys, their problems are probably real. They may be perfectly nice people who were just slowly driven mad by all of those kids. That could happen to anybody. Just look at all the crazy people that only have ONE kid. But that isn’t the point here. The point is that controversy brings money, and the money perpetuates itself… so more  controversy. It’s not rocket science.  The turmoil will get weighed, measured, polled,  surveyed, and packaged. That’s just marketing. It’s big shiny Christmas packages full of hostility.

So my advice for the average business? If you get into a fight with your business partner and 10 million people come to watch, then hey, take the money and run.  But other than that, don’t try this business model at home. It doesn’t work for everyone, and frankly, there just aren’t enough toasters to go around.

Marketing Trend News gets rebuilt.

We decided to take a whole new direction with our blog, which required a complete overhaul.  Some of our new and unorthodox marketing analysis will include cartoons, unusual interviews, and special ratings by Spaz the Marketing Dog. We felt this called for a whole new site design, as well as a new article base. We’ll be reworking old articles, and adding fresh ones, so we hope you’ll come back and see what we have going on. We’ll be talking about marketing trends in different industries, and we even have some celebrity interviews planned. You can subscribe by feed or email, and please post your comments, we’d love to hear from you!