Marketing is not a static discipline. New trends, new technologies, changing consumer behaviors, and unforeseen world events. Every year seems to bring a new set of rules and a new playing field for marketers to navigate. If there’s one thing we in marketing can count on, it’s that marketing is constantly changing. If you’re not adapting or evolving you could be left behind. I was recently reminded of this by Social Geek podcast host Jack Monson, who advised, “The marketing landscape changes so quickly. If you are set on a particular marketing channel, you could be missing out.”

Last week, we took a moment to look back at 2015’s biggest marketing trends. This week, we’re looking forward to the marketing innovations in store for 2016.

In keeping with our innovation theme this week, let’s take a more in-depth look at the driving force behind innovation: creativity.

We live in a world saturated with messaging. It’s this saturation, argues Jez Frampton, CEO of Interbrand, that makes creativity more important than ever before. The market is not necessarily a meritocracy (as much as we like to think it is sometimes); it’s often the case that the product presented most creatively is the one that is heard above the noise. This makes creativity, not product features, one of the most powerful differentiators your company can showcase.

DocuStar’s MarketHUB+ marketing resource management system is a finalist for this year’s Innovation Awards to be announced this week! In the spirit of that designation, below are some guidelines for building a culture of Innovation within your company.

In an era of rapid change and evolving technology, companies that provide the culture, resources and willingness to innovate are better poised for long-term success. But in order to build a culture of innovation, businesses need to think about what innovation means to them. Too often, we hinder our ability to innovate by only thinking of innovation in grandiose terms – “What’s the next greatest product ever invented,” – and overlook smaller, more practical ways to stay ahead of the curve.

Tenacious and intentional, innovative companies inspire us by pushing the envelope of what is currently possible and envision the future by relentlessly challenging the status quo. We can all learn from, and emulate, their boldness.

In part one of this series, we discussed how marketing resource management systems can be used to enable Sales to demonstrate thought leadership and help nurture leads through to close. In part two, we discuss strategies for getting your distributed sales channels engaged in using marketing technology systems to their full potential.

DocuStar’s MarketHUB+ marketing resource management system is a finalist for the Cincinnati USA Innovation Awards to be announced tonight! In the spirit of that designation, below we share some of our ideas to encourage marketing innovation.

Marketing innovation cannot and should not be an isolated process. One of the pitfalls of functional silos is that information can tend to stay within the department, but with so many departments directly interacting with customers in the customer value chain, it’s critical to engage all functional groups in the innovation process to help inspire new ideas. Here are four suggestions:

Marketing professionals are called to deliver tactical marketing support while maintaining a big-picture, strategic view, and it can be hard to find balance between the two competing priorities. Tactical and strategic marketing functions can be especially hard to balance because they divide our focus between important, urgent and important, not urgent activities (think Stephen Covey’s Quadrant I & II activities). Tactical execution against strategic goals is critical for driving marketing results, but it’s important not to skew so far towards the tactical that focus on strategic activities wanes: Strategic marketing activities help to bolster marketing innovation. Here are some of our suggestions for helping to find and maintain balance.

Although QR Codes are being used across varieties of industries, it is still critical to stress the importance of creating mobile friendly landing pages and to continue to expand on the innovation of QR Code applications. In that respect, we are excited to announce a new blog series on the reviews of current QR Codes that organizations are using in their marketing. For each blog, we will choose a QR Code to review and then offer tips and tricks on how to improve on them.

It is important for marketing to be both tactical and strategic. As a deadline-driven and fast-paced function, however, marketers tend to juggle multiple high priority projects at various stages in the campaign management lifecycle, and it can be challenging to make time for strategic marketing planning and innovation – especially given today’s environment of staffing and budget constraints. Tactical execution without the strategy component will render marketing initiatives less effective, but strategy cannot exist in a vacuum either. Here are five simple approaches for making time to be innovative while gaining better command over tactical functions.