Networking Guru
There are always people who try to forecast marketing trends for the coming year. Here are 5 trends that have been forecast for 2012. It will be interesting to see if they do pan out as predicted.
The concept of having to create loads of friends and followers through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites to make your business successful is no longer completely valid. While it’s great to have the numbers, there’s a greater emphasis being placed on the quality of the people you have in your various lists now.
It’s pointless having people who grab a freebie you offer and then unsubscribe or remain subscribed but never do anything else. Brand loyalty is the focus for the new year. It’s better to have smaller groups of people who spend money regularly. Then you can focus the bulk of your advertising and marketing on those people.
Small businesses must focus on their specific niches and become recognized as the expert or the “go-to” company for whatever it is that they do. This is far better than trying to be all things to all people because you end up spreading yourself too thin and lose more business. Focus on your target market and throw everything you can at those people to attract their business and you’ll achieve much greater success.
More and more people are using the Internet today than ever before. This means it can be hard to break through the massive amounts of advertising to find your target audience. This is why it’s vital that you create quality content, whether it’s on your website or on your social media profile pages and interactions. It’s only high quality content that is powerful enough to break through the clutter.
Because social media is more important to businesses today, that’s where more money needs to be spent. Print and radio advertising are less important now and don’t deserve the lion’s share of the funds. Because consumers surf the net and social sites, you need to be where they congregate if you want their money. You must have a web presence.
Consumers can easily track brands and check reputations via the Internet to determine if that’s where they should spend their money. The general public has a stronger voice than ever before because of social media sites. Small businesses need to increase their own reputation online so potential new customers will notice them and make sensible buying decisions, hopefully in favor of those small businesses.
Marketing trends are governed by the Internet more today than ever before. If you follow these trends and keep up, you’ll stand a greater chance of being successful at whatever you’re doing than if you continued to ignore everything the Internet represents.