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10 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2007

Throughout 2006, I've been watching and interpreting the marketing stats and studies that impact small businesses to give you tips on staying one step ahead. Now, with 2007 fast approaching, let's look at a roundup of the hottest trends, from changes taking place among consumer audiences through what to watch for in traditional and online marketing. Here's the info you need on the most important trends and how to make the most of them to increase sales and grow your business in the New Year.

Consumer Trends

1. College Grads
If you're searching for the most effective way to reach this desirable prospect group, move your marketing dollars into online media. The internet is now the primary source of media and entertainment among college grads, whose top planned purchases upon graduation are professional clothing, travel/airline tickets, health insurance and furniture according to the “Y2M: eGrad College Graduate Survey”. Nearly 80 percent of respondents are online purchasers, making them ideal candidates for your online campaign.

2. Affluent Working Women
The big news is that this group is increasing in size, and the best way to reach them may be online. According to The Media Audit, affluent working women with family incomes of $75,000 or more are growing in number, and 94.3 percent access the internet during an average month. About half are now considered heavy users of the internet, while heavy use of radio, television, newspapers and direct mail has all declined within this group. To increase sales from this expanding audience, alter your media spending to place greater emphasis online.

3. Asian Population Growth
The southern region of the U.S. boasts the fastest Asian population growth rate (31 percent), followed by the Midwest (24 percent), the Northeast (23 percent) and the West (19 percent), according to an analysis of Census Bureau data in the “American Community Survey” by Kang & Lee Advertising. Asians represent a prospect group with higher than average household incomes and education levels. Can you offer a product or service that will appeal to this growing market?

4. Word-Of-Mouth
Want to build buzz? Lucid Marketing's study, "U.S. Adults: Word of Mouth Communications," found that women were more likely than men to share a positive experience with a business or recommend an enjoyable product; full-time employees made substantially more daily contacts than those not in the workforce; and people with household earnings of more than $100,000 were more likely to make recommendations than those earning less. So buzz marketers should direct efforts to these three "chatty" groups.

Trends in Traditional Media

5. Yellow Pages
According to a study from the Kelsey group, marketers targeting younger demographics should transition away from print. Only 28 percent of teens said they would turn to print Yellow Pages first to find a local business, product, or service, while 47 percent said their first choice would be search engines. And just 44 percent of respondents between the ages and 18 and 34 favored print Yellow Pages.

6. Simultaneous Media Usage
There's no longer such a thing as a captive media audience--consumers are frequently participating in more than one form of media at any one time. Seventy percent of web users, for instance, watch TV occasionally to regularly while online, according to BIGresearch’s “Simultaneous Media Survey.” It also found that nearly 65 percent watch TV while they read, and 51 percent of radio listeners read the newspaper while listening. The rise in multitasking among consumers mandates an integrated media approach and an increased emphasis on advertising within the most relevant and engaging content.

7. Newspapers
This past year, many of the websites of major newspapers have become the number-one portals in their geographic markets and are drawing a larger, younger and more affluent readership. The audience that reads a newspaper’s website but not its print version accounts for 2 to 15 percent of the Integrated Newspaper Audience, according to Scarborough Research, and that represents hundreds of thousands of readers for many newspapers in larger markets. They’re successfully attracting 18-to-34-year-olds to their sites, and the online readers are more upscale, which can make them a more desirable audience. If you're an advertiser in the "print" newspaper, you can negotiate for a combo rate to run online as well to reach these additional readers. And if advertising in the print newspaper is too expensive for your business, you may find more affordable rates online by drilling down past the main pages to place ads on content-rich, but less frequently visited web pages.

Hot Online Trends

8. Web Conferencing
As business travel becomes increasingly challenging due to increased security, advance check-in times and transportation delays, online workshops and meetings that require no travel are coming to the forefront. It’s more desirable than ever to demo your new product to a group or make a sales presentation without anyone ever leaving home. Participants can watch your presentation on their computer monitors and hear you live on their computer speakers or by phone. In fact, I'm now transitioning to this technology to deliver webinars, and you can, too.

9. Online Research
Whether you sell exclusively online or primarily through a brick-and-mortar site, online search will have a profound impact on your sales in 2007. When asked how often they researched products online before buying them in person or in a store, 87 percent of nearly 7,500 respondents to a BIGresearch “Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey” said they did so occasionally to regularly. And a comScore research study showed that 63 percent of searchers completed a purchase in offline retail stores following their search activity. So no matter whether you sell online, off-line or both, you need a great website with deep, persuasive content that keeps your prospects and customers shopping on your site or sends them to your store.

10. Local Search
Want to know where to invest your online marketing dollars in 2007? Aim for higher rankings in the top search engines. Sixty-two percent of searchers click on a link within the first page of results, according to a report from iProspect and Jupiter Research. To win higher rankings in natural search results, you can optimize your site by sprinkling the keyword phrases your best prospects will be searching for throughout all the pages of your site, in your page descriptions and in metatags. You should also secure links to your site from other high-ranking websites. But to guarantee you'll turn up in the top search results, invest in a paid search campaign. Local search campaigns are often the most affordable and will bring traffic from your immediate market area in the New Year.

Kim T. Gordon
15 Apr 2007

Kim T. Gordon is the "Marketing" coach at Entrepreneur.com and a multifaceted marketing expert, speaker, author and media spokesperson. Over the past 26 years, she's helped millions of small-business owners increase their success through her company,National Marketing Federation Inc. Her latest book,Maximum Marketing, Minimum Dollars, is now available.

Branding Trends: Delivery Channels Take The Lead

In looking at current business branding trends--and what might be around the corner in 2007--what strikes me most are not the tactics being used, but the mediums being called on to disseminate the messages. While you can’t ignore branding basics, you can no longer rely on traditional outlets such as TV, radio and print to get the job done; they must take into consideration all the new media at their disposal, including blogs, podcasts, mobile phone-based programming, social networks and RSS feeds.

Moving forward, branding success will depend on adapting to the rapidly evolving media environment and taking advantage of new opportunities to reach your target audience. Ongoing research into appropriate delivery channels will be critical to ensuring that branding messages are communicated in ways that resonate with specific consistencies.

Using “hot” media to spread your message will be especially critical for brands seeking to establish themselves with younger or more tech-savvy audiences, as these people are often the first to navigate away from traditional delivery methods. While this means it may be more difficult to determine the appropriate media in which to invest your branding dollars, it also offers a unique opportunity to more closely target your marketing efforts based on consumer tastes and interests.

Blogs are a great example of communication that’s typically focused on specific subject matter and/or directed to a well-defined constituency. By identifying blogs that are attractive to your target market, you have the chance to personalize your branding efforts like never before. Accurate research, combined with the ability to react quickly to new opportunities, will separate savvy branding campaigns from those that continue to rely on outlets that are less compelling than they used to be.

But let’s get back to those branding constants that will remain critical for establishing and maintaining brand awareness with your target audience. Regardless of the medium chosen for distribution, you must:

Ensure your brand promise is clear. Be simple, be direct, and by all means, be consistent.

Focus on creating a well-conceived brand name. Even the cleverest branding strategy will fall flat if the name you seek to brand is poorly conceived.

Understand the competition. No one operates in a vacuum. While originality is important, it’s critical to be aware of your competitors’ branding strategies.

Set branding goals. You can’t very well determine your success if you don’t have a benchmark against which to measure it. Know where you want to go and when you want to get there.

Remain committed yet flexible. Branding success doesn’t occur overnight; it takes commitment to maintain focus and build loyalty. But that doesn’t mean strategy changes might not be necessary along the way, so be open to tweaking your approach as necessary.

What remains most critical in the branding arena is being consistent, especially as the variety of media options continues to expand. The last thing you want to do is send confusing or conflicting messages, and that can be all the more likely as you add variety to your media mix.

As we move closer to 2007, the elements of successful branding will not be all that different, but the proper use of evolving media channels will spell the difference between successful campaigns and those that fail to hit the mark.

John Williams
29 May 2007

John Williams is Entrepreneur.com's "Image & Branding" columnist and the founder and president of LogoYes.com, the world's first do-it-yourself logo design website. During John's 25 years in advertising, he's created brand standards for Fortune 100 companies like Mitsubishi and won numerous awards for his design work.