Creating Strategy for the Future: Predicting the NEXT Big Thing

by Chris Brown on Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Are you pulling together your strategic plan for the next 3 to 5 years? Just trying to nail down your marketing budget for 2010?

If you are looking for the next trend — not a fad, but the next trend – Michael Moe suggests that you look at the demographics over time to project where things will be.

History shows that the next big thing is not the most popular thing now.

Thanks to Chris Morris at Entrepreneurs Corner.

So how will your marketing approach change for your brand in 2010? If you’re like many, your 2010 marketing budget has to produce an amazingly strong value in both short term and long term.

While creating blogs (or online newsletters as some companies prefer to call their reoccuring articles) has been around for a while, there are still many companies who are not taking advantage of this method to drive traffic to their website or build subscriber equity.

Social media is a whole ‘nother level of marketing as well. How many small and medium sized businesses have a Facebook page for their brand? Or a Twitter account? It’s much easier and more cost effective over time to gather fans and insert a coupon on your Facebook fan page than to insert it in a local newspaper or mail out in a traditional print newsletter. Once you have a fan following you, you have opt in access to their wall and their friends wall.

If you have a blog, you can use networked blogs app in Facebook to distribute the content… along with more tradtional RSS feeds and email.

So what’s the fee for your marketing budget for blogging and fan paging? Time. Ideas. Persistance. Creativity. Some knowledge. But not a lot of cash outlay.

Sure makes for a nice ROI on the branding and marketing budget.
How are you using “new” media to stretch your budget and increase the ROI from your marketing efforts?

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