Whether you are a new college grad with a major in advertising and marketing or a new biz owner who wants to get a handle on the vast changes in marketing, here is the very least you should know and understand:
Predictions by researchers tell us that advertising spending on traditional media will continue to decline in the next five years, nudged to the sidelines by online, mobile and digital options, website SEO practices, social networking and e-mail marketing. Understanding New Media is essential if you want to be a force in the new age of marketing. If this sounds like bad news, it doesn’t have to be; traditional media will continue to adapt, and those in the forefront of these changes will not merely survive, they will thrive.
Green commerce is gaining momentum, meaning the interest in — and need for – more environmentally-friendly products and services will continue. Great opportunities abound for clients and customers who embrace ecologically-sound practices. And it also makes you feel a part of something authentic and spiritual.
Effective marketing today is more about solving customers’ and clients’ problems than providing clever creative or differentiating one agency from another in terms of cool…
but with that said, creative idea generation is the one single commodity clients seek above all others when they choose an agency/marketing firm or PR practitioner.
Remember when your high school teacher insisted that writing well would eventually be the ticket to success in any career you might choose? He was right. Business communicatons via e-mails, company blogs, online forums, and social networks is more vital than ever before. Telling a business’s cultural “story” in a compelling way is essential in today’s competitive business environment. Thinker-writers who can synthesize information and express themselves well will be in higher demand than ever before. Bloggers? It’s true: they are the new journalists. Blogging is no longer a mere social endeavor; it’s an entirely new profession.
Marketing is less “push” (pushing products and services on people in the form of commercial messages), and more “pull” (getting potential customers to actually seek information themselves about your product and services. It’s less interruption (of customers’ viewing and reading experiences), and more interaction — creating entertaining or informational content they enthusiastically choose to read about or watch.
The most successful businesses of tomorrow will be flexible, resilient, transparent, and socially networked.
