13. Thank You!
Additional trends and resources available
http://mindson.com/AMA
•Deloitte’s holiday survey
•CMO state of marketing
•2011 retail trends
•2011 barcode trends
•Social shopping trends
•Mobile consumer marketplace report
Editor's Notes
Minds On
So here’s a trend. The holidays now begin at Halloween. Check out your Home Depot or Lowes at Halloween and you’ll see them putting out trees, decorations etc…. It’s gets earlier and earlier. As marketers we need to be thinking about the Holidays in early Spring.
Another trend is Mobile Internet and Mobile devices. You can’t deny that mobile is trending and more and more people will move to mobile. As marketers we need to think about and plan for the 2014 Holiday now. Are your websites mobile, are you engaging the mobile audience? QR codes are also trending up. They provide mobile users with quick access to URLs to gain information quickly.
So is Santa Claus a trend during the holidays. YES. So what can marketers learn from Santa Claus to sell more this holiday season. He knows…. Sleeping, awake, been bad or good…. You can learn a lot from Santa the master of marketing campaigns.
So…How does Santa do it? How can you do it? It’s simple follow a process and a plan. Lesson – KNOW. Know your COMMUNITY and know your target audience. Lesson – Create meaningful and relevant CONTENT for your audience –Santa is a master of this. He can put up some signs at the mall, set-up a back drop and a big chair and instantly lines form.Lesson – Build the right CONSTRUCT to deliver your content - The Brand of Santa is everywhere. You can find websites, stories, movies, books, videos, in person visits. Letters to and from Santa. Cards, songs. He’s a marketing genius!
Lesson – Have CONVERSATIONS – Santa ask questions, responds to questions, listens and engages. Lesson – CONVERT – People sing the songs, buy the books, tell the stories and play along and create magic for their children.
Campaigns that are proactive and marketers that effectively use all the elements in their campaign will be successful.
Another trend you will see more and more of over the next few years. Focus on the Community, the target audience and market and sell to the person – or persona. I have a great example.
Here’s a company that believes in this and I see this becoming a new trend and other marketers can learn something from this site. Check it out.
Are people really spending more online? According to ComScore data they are – Between 2005 and 2010 there’s a steady increase year over year? Are your sites, keywords, microsites, landing pages and e-mail campaigns ready to take advantage of this years spending?
The final trend is Keywords. When you’re writing ad copy to get attention for sales you’ll probably use Door Buster Sale, Buy-One-Get-One, 20% Off etc…. If you’re selling online those may not be the best words to optimize your campaign. So what’s in a word when it comes to search. Google, Bing, and Yahoo are rewarding page rank to sites containing human readable content, continuous content and content supported by the community. As marketers in charge of optimizing your digital world – I recommend you do you home work. Check out these words, and phrases related to the holidays using Google Ad Words – Keyword Tool It’s Free. What are people searching for during the holidays – and more important which key words have low competition and large global and local search results that you can optimize around.
So based on key words I would recommend creating keyword campaigns around the holiday’s busiest shopping days of the year. Build comprehensive campaigns around these days, market to your target audience and personas and optimize your site and your ads to get found and convert.
