The changing marketing landscape (and how to navigate it!)

If you were to carry out a retrospective on marketing practices over the past decade alone, it wouldn’t be hard to identify many, many significant changes. Ten years ago, companies could afford to rely on consumer loyalty alone to maintain a stake in the market. However, amongst so many other influences, with our lives now becoming so digital-centric with the almost unquantifiable influence of the internet, the advent and ever-evolving social media landscape and devices which keep blowing our minds with every new release, the routes to market have changed completely.

To have more (or should that be any) chance of success in this fiercely competitive global marketplace, as a business owner you can’t afford to ignore digital in your current marketing strategy – not only to attract new clients, but to actually retain a consistent market presence and communication stream to keep you on your current clients’ radar. If you don’t, your position can more quickly and more easily be swallowed up by your more proactive competitors.

This not to say that you have to go all-out and utilise every digital marketing channel available to you (unless you have unlimited funds!). Nor is it to say that the more traditional elements of the marketing mix, such as printed direct mail campaigns, networking and the face-to-face relationship building side of your business development activities to name but a few, are defunct – they are still an essential element to so many company marketing plans. In fact, if anything we are starting to spot that some traditional practices are enjoying somewhat of a renaissance, such as really targeted, clever direct mail.

So, the message here is don’t ignore any part of the mix really! Analyse all of the options and choose those which are right for your business and then consider how best to incorporate these activities, in the most appropriate way for your business and brand.  The key to success is a truly integrated approach, so reviewing your overall plan regularly is always a worthwhile exercise.

For now, I  thought I would leave you with some pretty mind-blowing statistics on digital trends found in recent reports online recently: