Total Marketing Solutions

With all the current ongoing furore surrounding privacy laws, the real star of the show is turning out to be twitter. People have long appreciated the immediacy and uniqueness of twitter, without necessarily being able to turn that appreciation into an advantage in business terms. But few will disagree now that twitter is here to stay and that - used carefully - it can develop into an extremely powerful tool to complement your other online marketing activities.  But where to start? Once your account is up and running, take the time to search out who you want to follow - segmenting your target market sectors where relevant. Then make sure you follow everyone who starts to follow you and build your audience from there. You can keep up to date with what people are saying about your company or products and services by searching for your ID, company name and industry segment. Set up searches for things you’d like your company to be known for - and then tweet a response every time that search term comes up. And make it easy to share by adding a twitter button to your website. There are countless online guides to getting the most out of twitter but the best approach is to jump in and get tweeting.

We’ve recently come across an interesting report published by Marketing Week in conjunction with SAS UK. The report follows in-depth surveys amongst over 500 marketing decision-makers last October so identify their current plans regarding marketing spend and their take on future trends. It makes for very interesting reading indeed. Whilst seven out of 10 of the marketers surveyed stated that they expect this year to represent a significant opportunity to capture market share and to grow, only 45% of those surveyed are convinced that their company can adapt to some of the changes it will face, but not be in a position to adapt to all of them. The report highlights that danger that, having managed to survive an uncertain past, marketing has still not learned how to plan for an uncertain future.

The report goes on to show that whilst many marketing professionals and those responsible for marketing within their organisation have come to terms with some of the major changes in marketing conditions during the last year or so, many have yet to grasp the significant changes in how marketing itself has changed. Multichannel routes to market are now embedded in the marketing mix and like it or not - they’re here to stay, or rather to continuously develop and mutate and change the marketing landscape. Worrying, however, is the fact that marketers themselves are continuing to struggle with their capabilities across such a wide range of potential marketing channels. The report also claims that marketers’ skills are developing more slowly than the role these diverse channels are increasingly playing. The report concludes that as changes to the market are a constant, then marketing itself needs to be able to keep up and change too.