The future of Marketing and how to manage it professionally

I just had a talk with some marketing experts about the future of marketing and what changes will probably happen. We agreed on some points that I will post in the Blog, these are things every company should know about and engage into (or at least each company should have some people that are good in these areas) in order for to become more successful and efficient:

Building and managing a strong brand
- Professional Brand Management is the Foundation for everything
-  Building a strong, emotional brand image that people remember and associate good feelings and images
-  Celebrating your brand, so people can experience it, connect it with emotions and talk about it
-  good positioning in your market
-   …. (this is a long but important list)

Management of Connected Marketing
- Word of Mouth Marketing
- Buzz Marketing
- Viral Marketing

Get people talking about your Product and make it virus worthy, so they spread your brand message into their social networks.

Generating and Managing Buzzworthy PR
Here are two definitions to make it more clear (taken from Connected Marketing):

A PR Consultant is “a applied social scientist who advises a client on the social attitudes and actions he or she must take in order to appeal to the public on which it is dependent”.

PR practice is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its public.

Managing Web 2.0 Marketing
Making professional use of:
-  Blogs / Blog marketing
-  Social Networks like MySpace, StudiVZ, Friendster….
-  Games like Second Life, Word of Warcraft (huge potential if applied correctly)
-  Video platforms like YouTube, MyVideo
-  Viral advertising
-  Online Communities
-  Tracking Tools
-  Website, Email, Newsletters.. (the traditional tools)

Neuromarketing / Marketingpsychology
Understanding how and why Marketing and advertising really work and how you can make your advertising and marketing messages really efficient

Evangelism / Opinion Leader Marketing
- the Art of building relationships with influential people and getting them to evangelise and provide good word of mouth about your product
-  since 10 % of the western population tell the other 90 % what to buy, it would be beneficial to get in contact with these opinion leaders, recruit them for your company – make them loyal and let them spread good word of mouth about your brand
-  Integrated Communication of Connected marketing, Blogs and Social Networking

Integrated Communication of all your marketing channels
-  have a core message and a strong brand with emotional values
- communicate this message with all your communication channels in order to create a clear picture in the
   mind of the consumer
- align all your marketing channels (Direct Mail, Sales Personal, Video Communication, Online Marketing…) so
   they all communicate the same powerful message and desirable emotional benefits of your brand

Making Use of Consumer Generated Media and Open Source Marketing
-> see my entry about CGM

Using the Long Tail Approach to sell more of your products and services
-> Read more about this in The Long Tail

List to be continued…