by tradesmeninsights | Nov 1, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing, Traditional Marketing
As CMOs struggle, there is a window of opportunity for ad agency new business.
A new IBM study of more than 1,700 chief marketing officers reveals that most CMOs are well aware of the changing marketing landscape and the need to make fundamental changes to traditional marketing methods of brand and product marketing. But they are struggling to respond.
I recently read a great summary of these findings from one of my mentors, Michael Gass. Here are the highlights:
The study’s findings point to four key challenges that CMOs everywhere are confronting:
- The explosion of data – 90% of the world’s data today has been created in the last two years alone.
- The rise of social media – 56% of CMOs view social media as a key engagement channel.
- Channel and device choices – The growing number of new marketing channels and devices, from smartphones to tablets, is quickly becoming a priority for CMOs.
- Shifting demographics – New global markets and the influx of younger generations with different patterns of information access and consumption are changing the face of the marketplace.
The Importance of Social Media
This study reiterates the importance of social media and the need for agencies to be better positioned as leaders in this evolving consumer engagement channel. Carolyn Heller Baird, CRM research lead for the IBM Institute for Business Value and the global director of the study likens marketers who underestimate the impact of social media to those who were slow to view the Internet as a new and powerful platform for commerce.
“The inflection point created by social media represents a permanent change in the nature of customer relationships… Like the rise of e-business more than a decade ago, the radical embrace of social media by all customer demographic categories represents an opportunity for marketers to drive increased revenue, brand value and to reinvent the nature of the relationship between enterprises and the buyers of their offerings.”
CMOs identify customer relationships as one of their top priorities, and recognize the impact of real-time data and social media supplementing traditional methods of marketing and gathering market feedback, but they remain stuck in traditional approaches.
“Marketers who are receptive to social media and the insight it provides will be far better prepared to anticipate future shifts in markets and technology.”
Additional insights from this study:
- 78% of CMOs expect more complexity over the next five years, but only 48% are prepared to deal with more complexity.
- 82% of CMOs say they plan to increase their use of social media over the next three to five years, only 26% are currently tracking blogs, 42% are tracking third-party reviews and 48% are tracking consumer reviews to help shape their marketing strategies.
- 63% of CMOs believe return on investment (ROI) on marketing spend will be the most important measure of their success by 2015. However, only 44% feel fully prepared to be held accountable for marketing ROI.
- Less than half of the CMOs surveyed have much sway over key parts of the pricing process, and less than half have much impact on new product development or channel selection.
- 56% of CMOs viewing social media as a key engagement channel – but they still struggle with capturing valuable customer insight from the unstructured data that customers and potential customers produce.
- CMOs still focus primarily on traditional sources of information such as market research and competitive benchmarking, and 68% rely on sales campaign analysis to make strategic decisions.
- Four-fifths of respondents plan to use customer analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), social media and mobile applications more extensively over the next three to five years.
- Nearly two-thirds of CMOs think return on marketing investment will be the primary measure of the marketing function’s effectiveness by 2015. But only half of all CMOs feel insufficiently prepared to provide hard numbers for ROI.
- 75% of CMOs believe marketing must manage brand reputation within and beyond the enterprise.
Click here for the IBM 2011 CMO Study Video News Release.
To access the full 2011 IBM Global CMO Study, visit http://ibm.com/cmostudy
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 18, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
I recently spoke with Scott Chapin from Circle 44 Mobile, a division of DigiKnow who is a strategic partner of ours, on how and why manufacturers should be using QR codes in their everyday marketing efforts.
Scott covers not only why they should use them, but gives some practical advice and best practices for those thinking of using them. If your end users are mobile, and most professional tradesmen are, then you need to listen to this informative interview.
Click here to listen.
If you like this post you may like:
What are you Doing to Insure a Successful QR Code Campaign?
Manufacturers: Are you Taking Advantage of QR Codes?
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 12, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
I had the chance to catch up with Mike Weil, the editorial director of Contracting Business magazine. I wanted to get his views on the recent Comfortech and HVACR Week show that just ended since I was unable to attend.
Mike gave an overview of attendance, the mood of contractors and what the show buzz was. The contractors were upbeat and were anxious to learn more about new products and hybrid systems and were looking for new business opportunities. Enjoy the conversation. Listen here.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 6, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
I know one of the biggest challenges for manufacturers that we represent is getting to the young entrants in the trades. They know how to get to the old guys, they’ve been doing it for years and know that traditional things like trade ads and direct mail programs are effective tools to reach them.
But when you talk to these folks on how they plan on reaching the future generations of tradesmen, they are definitely puzzled as they know the traditional methods are probably not the best way to connect with them. They think of social media as one possible avenue to connect with these young people, but often neglect the mobile devices.
While that may not be surprising that young people are active in mobile devices, what might surprise you is that the baby boomers are also active in mobile, but just a different kind. Consider this: 91 million U.S. consumers use the internet through mobile devices at least once a month and that number continues to rise (Affinity reports that more than 24 million millennials plan on purchasing smart phones in the next 6 months).
So the question is:
- Do you have a mobile strategy in place to reach your young targeted audiences?
- Do you have a mobile friendly website?
- Are you planning smart phone apps?
- What’s your plan to start collecting e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers for future marketing programs?
Mobile will play an important part in communicating with the younger tradesmen. What’s your plan?
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 9, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
I still am amazed that marketing executives, especially in larger companies (80% 0f companies with 100 plus employees), acknowledge that social media is a legit marketing tool, but yet fail to take the time to develop a strategy for it.
It’s like ready, fire, aim!
A recent post in eMarketer.com, Executives Fail to Focus on Social Media Marketing Strategy, quotes several sources as to the reasons.
Here are several disturbing points:
- No surprise, most of these executives feel tentative about making social strategy a priority.
- They are not overly optimistic about their current strategy.
- It looks like small and medium sized firms have the advantage over larger ones.
It’s funny that that the marketing priorities for social – customer retention, customer acquisition and branding – are not foreign words to marketers, but somehow there is a disconnect when putting an integrated plan together that includes both traditional and social in the same plan.
I don’t get it. If they put together a traditional plan they way they do social, they probably wouldn’t have a job.
by tradesmeninsights | Jun 28, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Traditional Marketing
As the world grows more mobile, it’s inevitable that smartphones are and will become a more intricate part of our daily routine. It’s my contention that in our world of reaching the professional tradesmen these phones are being used on a regular basis.
I don’t have the data to back that up since there have been no formalized studies done specifically on this market segment. But if you make the assumption that what we do in our everyday lives rolls over to our work day routines, then a new study out by Google that looks at the purchasing habits of smartphone users in the U.S. may be of interest to you.
Chris Crum from Webpronews.com outlines the highlights of the study. Among them are these points that I find interesting:
- 89% of smartphone owners use their device throughout the day for a variety of activities.
- 82% notice ads on their phones and half of them take action.
- 95% of users have looked for local information
- 77% have contacted a business by either calling or visiting
What kinds of trends are you seeing out there?
