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.

Taking a look back at some of 2015’s biggest marketing trends can be a great way to review the year, and think toward 2016 marketing strategy – if you haven’t already done so.

On the children’s live-action adventure show Captain Midnight, members of the Secret Squadron used special decoder rings to decipher messages that no one else could understand. The secret decoding power provided a competitive advantage that allowed the Secret Squadron to win.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could slip on a special marketing decoder ring to decipher your prospects? Imagine the advantage of knowing the secret communication channel and message to most efficiently and effectively win the sale. Marketing case studies would be written and awards presented as victory over your competition would be certain. The challenge is that consumer’s aren’t predictable, linear, rational or sequential beings. In other words, good luck decoding your shopper. That’s not to suggest you should ignore consumer behavior or the buying process though. Because when you do crack the code by engaging your customers through the right touch point with relevant and timely information, you build consumer trust and improve their buying experience.

“Where all the solutions are best-in-class, the ROI is proven, and customers are engaged.”

Sounds great, doesn’t it? If you are a fan of Garrison Keillor who reports the news from Lake Wobegon – a fictional town in Minnesota – on the radio show “A Prairie Home Companion,” you probably recognized my spin on his tag line; “Reporting from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” It’s a fun show, and I’m sure you would enjoy listening.

I completed my college studies at Abilene Christian University which is located in Abilene, Texas. I really like Abilene and look forward to my class reunions. However; for marketing organizations, Abilene is to be avoided when mentioned in the context of the “Abilene Paradox.”

As we’ve discussed on this blog before, technological changes and economic variables are putting more and more pressure on marketing teams and businesses in general to justify strategies and quantify results with data. The problem with data is that data, in its simplest, just-collected form, is completely raw. Knowing that 10 of your leads this month came from Ohio doesn’t really tell anyone anything about how well you did or how you should run your business going forward. Is that number high or low when compared with how you’ve done in that state in the past? How does it compare to other states? The point is data needs a context before it can have meaning and be useful.

Here’s the problem with everything I just said, though: The person who manages the data collection often isn’t the person who is best qualified to place the data in a useful context. There’s a data integration process – from collection, to management and filtration, to analysis, to action – that relies on technology and systems, and someone has to maintain those systems (usually IT). But, IT isn’t the department actually needing/using the data (that would be marketing and/or sales). At some point, the data baton needs to be handed off, and figuring out how to do that is the real challenge for businesses.

There was breakdown in the assembly line and no one on Henry Ford’s staff could fix it. As the story goes, his production lines were down for hours; hours turned into days, and Ford was frustrated. In desperation he called an electrical engineer friend whom he trusted to come to his plant, diagnose and repair the problem. His friend promptly arrived and after about ten minutes the Ford lines were up and running. A most grateful Henry Ford thanked him and told his friend to invoice the Ford Company for the repairs. A few days later Henry Ford received an invoice from his friend in the amount of $10,000. Flabbergasted, Henry called his friend on the telephone and protested, “You only tinkered around for ten minutes! Ten-thousand dollars?!” His friend agreed that he would re-invoice the repairs. A few days later Henry Ford received a modified invoice:

Tinkering…..$10

Marketers have many new technologies at their disposal that increase efficiency, agility and productivity, including marketing resource management
systems, but building the business case for investing in these resources can be difficult. When evaluating any new tool, marketers and business leaders need to look at ROI, but they should also consider the cost of inaction (COI), as reported recently by B2C. Measuring the cost of inaction involves quantifying the opportunity costs of continuing in the status quo, as well as engaging with internal stakeholders to gather the information you will need to create urgency for the proposed change. Here are three steps for making the case for change – and succeeding.

Today’s marketing environment can be frenetic to say the least, and effective marketing management is all about strategy. Your budget and resource constraints limit the number of activities your team can reasonably support in any given week or month, and making time to accomplish the most important activities demands expert prioritization. Here are four steps for boosting marketing productivity.

In Part 1 of our series on Building Brand Trust, we discussed strategies for building trust through social media and customer communities. While companies should always strive for a proactive approach to building brand trust, however, there are times when trust has been broken and needs to be restored. Here we discuss strategies for repairing broken trust – even when it may seem like an impossible task.