Resolutions for Marketers in 2012

I’m not big on making specific resolutions for the new year, but I do take time to reflect and see what’s working and what’s not both in my personal and professional life. It’s a great habit to get into on a regular basis, not just once each year.

So, marketers—especially CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers)—what are your plans for 2012?

5 Resolutions to Bring Marketing Success in 2012

1. Listen to your customers more.

Technology and social networks continue to make it easier than ever to listen to your customers. You have no excuse for not knowing what your customers want. Focus groups are no longer the most powerful tools in your hand.

Many social networks (like Facebook and LinkedIn) let you conduct polls on as many topics as you want. SurveyMonkey allows you to poll customers in even greater depth. There are many tools you can use. The point is you should use them to your advantage.

Beyond polling, your employees who manage the social networks for your company can use all sorts of filters on each network to find out what people are talking about. Even better, platforms like Radian6 and Alterian do the listening for you, compiling comments and posts from across many networks.

I repeat, you have no excuse for not knowing what your customers think and want.

2. Learn how to speak the language of your customers.

No customer wants to hear about verticals, synergies or continuums. Listen to the words your customers use. Use those same words when you speak to them. Get rid of marketing jargon once and for all.

The more simply you speak, the easier it is for people to hear—especially among all the other noise out there. If you want to be heard, you don’t have to be the loudest, you just have to be the most clear.

3. Create the ideal marketing department.

Do you really have the right distribution of strengths and skills throughout your marketing department? Or is your marketing department still structured the same as it was in the 1980s or ‘90s?

Your marketing department should be full of people who understand three things—technology, human behavior and communication.

You need at least one person (ideally, more) who not only understands new technology quickly, but also keeps up on all the latest developments and can readily inform you and the rest of the marketing team. Being quick to adapt is crucial in this new age of marketing.

Communicators are also key. Your team must be able to understand and communicate well with all types of audiences. The immediacy of social networking requires communicators who can engage, entertain and stay calm under pressure.

4. Listen to your employees more.

Your employees are already on social networks in their free time (and while working). Use their expertise, even if they’re not in your marketing department. The best ideas often come from those who know what it’s like to be a customer and have good and bad experiences to share.

Find people most excited to spread the word about your company and let them. Marketing can be easily taught—personality and enthusiasm, not so much.

5. Don’t try to do it all.

Just because a social network exists doesn’t mean you have to be on it. Choose your channels wisely. (For more info, see: Which Social Media Channels Should Your Business Use?)

Consider the following:

• Where is your audience hanging out?
• Where is your audience engaging most?
• Do you have the resources to handle the channels you choose?
• If you could only handle one channel well, which would that be?

Don’t be afraid of only being on one social network. If that’s where your audience engages most, that one network might be enough.

And one more…

If you haven’t figured mobile out yet, you’re already behind. Hire designers, writers and technology experts who can start figuring out how to best reach your customers through mobile. With tablet and smartphone growth, you’ll need to have useful apps and promotions that appeal to customers rather than annoy. If you’re in retail, understanding this technology is even more important. So, get to it!

Good luck with all your resolutions this year!

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Photo provided by Kookkai_nak at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Emerging Interactive & Digital Media Trends in 2012

I’m sure you’ve seen many predictions already for social media and technology in 2012. Here’s your chance to add your thoughts.

There’s a great discussion taking place on LinkedIn (it’s been going for 4 months) in the Interactive & Digital Media group. It all started with the question:

What are the few new emerging interactive & digital media trends in the next 1-2 years?

Augmented reality

Forget the QR code (well, not yet). Augmented reality will eventually blow away QR codes.

Check out some of these iPhone apps that use augmented reality. They include:

• Golf range finder
• GPS and compass apps for hiking
• Sightseeing and travel guide apps

The detail and capabilities are what’s really exciting and impressive. We should see these capabilities explode in the next year or two or three.

Another interesting example is what the Moscow (Russia) Ministry of Internal Affairs did to try and improve road safety.

Near-field communications (NFC)

Many people agreed this was the field to watch. Cashless payment is just the start. Jon Cheung sees it as “an interesting social arena, that will make it easier to check into locations, easier to like things in the real world, and easier to share information, and a new element to games.”

Bruce Condit adds a nice sense of the integration available:

Imagine, your customer walks in the door, they receive a coupon via BlueTooth promoting your latest special. They purchase the item or service, using the coupon that was broadcast to them, and they pay for their purchase using NFC. This would enable business owners to really target their offers based upon time of day, location, season, etc. It could also provide powerful demographics based upon coupon usage.

Social TV

Some social TV products are already on the market. We don’t hear too much yet, but I think we soon will. It’s a logical progression, with many comments on social and connected TV in the group discussion. (Look for comments by Zach Weiner, Nick Meyers, and Sean Connors)

As Sean Connors suggests,

With the dawn of wi-fi enabled televisions finally becoming more widespread, we’re on the cusp of another level of interactivity. I easily see digital content providers creating ways for viewers interact…the ability to reach across multiple platforms is just another added plus.

There are so many possibilities here.

Personalization

We’re not just talking marketing and market segmentation here. We’re already seeing advances in personalization of search results. This will go even further to personalized decision engines or context-based recommendation engines.

Jon Cheung gives a great example:

Google knows what I like, who I talk to, and what I talk about, mash that against the Internet and Google should be able to customize a wall of content tailored exactly for me.

Many people talk about how facial recognition software will change things. And Megan Cunningham talks about how the entertainment industry is developing a more intimate relationship with its audience.

I think the emergence of personalized photo-apps (like the campaign we launched earlier this year with ABC’s game show, Wipeout) is another way of looking at personalization. And many other entertainment marketers have done this effectively as well, developing more intimacy (and often humor) between audiences and the characters in their shows.

Advertising

I think we all realize the benefits and challenges this creates for advertising. In fact, I’ve talked here about advances in display advertising that were highlighted by Google recently.

All these changes in technology will bring exciting new interactivity and creativity to advertising.

This will be fun to watch!

So, what are your predictions? Add them to the group discussion on LinkedIn, or feel free to talk about them right here.