I See Great Things In Your Future

Can we predict the future?  Can YOU predict the future?  I think all we could do is guess, kind of like weathermen do.  There are a lot of people that try to tell what is going to happen in the upcoming year, which way trends will go, but the truth of the matter is, we can only guess.  We can make educated guesses and sound like we know what we are talking about.  We could look at what has happened in the last few months and form an opinion but there are no experts.  Some people talk a good talk but experts they are not.

I have a lot of respect for people that use the terminology “likely to expect” in their futuristic outlook of advertising.  I came across a write up that looked at seven “trends” to look for in 2012. Seven Trends In Advertising for 2012  It was well written and I wanted to share some of the highlights from the article.  I saw the words “likely to expect” and I was hooked so I kept reading.

This blogger didn’t share his (her) name, at least I could not find it but the website is called Small Business Advertising Strategies.  They mentioned how small companies will expand the use of automated marketing, “a mainstream solution for connecting their marketing operations from the top, through to online search engines and finally down to the sales and customer service level.”

Small businesses will need to be quick about how their service or product is perceived because of the lightning fast results that social networking has had on spreading news, good or bad.  Not only are companies listening to what their customers are saying but they are changing their products because of this feedback.  

Doesn’t it seem like as we get more technologically advanced; we seem to take a thousand steps back.  What I mean is, way, way back in time politicians listened to the people they served, companies went door to door selling their products and everything was more personal and smaller, not huge and full of corporate greed.  With the emergence of social media it seems to have put the power back into the hands of the consumers.  We now have the power to make or break a company because of our connected reach.

The article talked about the importance of the “like” buttons and how many Smartphone users we see shopping with their handheld devices.  We will see services like Groupon increase and using social sites for advertising.

 

I am ready to tackle this brave new world; I read everything I could get my hands on and hope that I could make a difference, somehow.  I wouldn’t invest too much time trying to predict what the next big thing is, I would step back and take it all in.  If you focus on one trend too heavily you may find yourself stuck with a room full of VCR’s and no one to buy them.  Keep your ears and eyes open and please, do me a big favor…let me know what you hear. 



  "Advertising Trends - 7 Trends In Advertisin for 2012." Small Business Adveretising Stratagies. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb 2012. <www.smallbusinessadvertisingstratagies.com>.