In a couple of months the weather will warm up and people will go to the ice shops to buy a sundae – ice cream, whipped cream, and toppings. If you love ice cream, you are looking forwards to buying at least one sundae. What if instead of ice cream, the shop put in meatballs? not the results you were looking for – Seth Godin in his book Meatball Sundae published by Portfolio Books, NY, 2007 saw many companies and organizations were producing meatball sundaes in their marketing execution. The reason is all the wonderful attributes of the web are added, except the organization had not changed to use and embrace what the web brings and does not bring.

Marketing is we make what we sell. Markets spread ideas, tell stories people want to hear and believe. Translate emotion into action to close the sale and make things people want to buy. The best available medium to reach the right people at the right time is used.

Trend 5   The Long Tail

In almost every single market “other” is the leading brand. Consumers reward providers that offer the most choices. While there maybe a number brand, the market itself is a lot smaller. In any normal marketplace, if you give people more choices, revenue goes up.

Think about the Sears catalog – the catalog frees a retailer from physical constraint. By putting a retail store in millions of home you could profitably stock far more than you could in an average store. The internet takes that equation and amplifies it. It permits niche sellers to pursue the same strategy that Sears took but even deeper.

The secrets of the long tail are people who really care will find you and going to the trouble to make what someone wants is in itself a useful marketing exercise. It is not what you think the market wants or what you want to the market to want. It is about creating and assembling a collection of goods and services that captures the attention (and commerce) of the people who truly care.

Trend 6  Outsourcing

It is not just possible to find someone to make/code. do something for you quickly and cheaply; it is very easy. Just because you can outsource something does not mean always you should.

Two choices: either take every repetitive, by the book task in your organization and outsource it or give the people who do the task the freedom, the incentive and the imperative to something that cannot be outsourced.

Trend 7  Google and The Dicing of Everything

Google and other search engines have broken the world into little tiny bits. This means the end to end solution offered by most organizations is destroyed and replaced with a pick and choose component based solution.

The idea that one product line can subsidize another is built into the way many businesses work. The fact that middle men profit by bundling information or product lines or shelf space is at the heart of what makes so many businesses successful. Now bundling and middleman services are deliberately undervalued.

Trend 8  Infinite Channels of Communication

New forms of communication will continue to evolve.

In order for the consumer to make a decision, two things need to happen. The second is that he/she needs to determine that is it worth the time or money to take action. The first is they need to know about the opportunity.

In the old days you appealed to the masses in the hope to get the consumer. Now you trying to only appeal to those who are interested and with email you can do it more cheaply that ever before. You can advertise on those tiny slices of the market in which you have determined where you market is – those who are passionate about your products and services. From adwords, to blogs, to videos to searches it is about being selectively targeted.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, one of the methods to do your homework in deciding how to invest is the company doing the correct things to reach its customers? How well does the company know who is willing to spend money on their goods and services? Where is their profit margin? what companies are attacking their profit margin? Answering those questions will help in defining where you invest your money.

There are more questions than answers, till next time – to raising questions.