Three Really Interesting Trade Marketing Ideas For Year 2014

If you look at how businesses communicated and marketed their products to potential supply chain customers a few years ago and today, you will find a huge difference between the trends of then and now. Trade marketing has changed, and it will continue to change over the course of 2014. Your trade marketing strategy for the year has to reflect and work with these rapid changes. Here are three marketing ideas that you can add to your next marketing strategy.

Focus on the mobile

 

Mobile devices are more than just an accessory or a communication device. These devices are the first choice of millions of people to interact with others and use the internet.
Among the mobile devices smartphones and tablets are very popular, as are cloud services and mobile. The importance of mobile has influenced the evolution of IT in a big way. Employees today want their experience with workplace technology to be as simple and engaging as their everyday technological experiences. This is where the ‘Bring your own device’ policy enters. This general trend has become popular in many workplaces and offices, and for good reasons. It helps marketers understand the importance of mobile, share content, and engage with customers.



Big Data is all about making, finding, and analyzing information at high speeds to personalize your marketing approach. Over the years, social media and digital platforms have helped bring in more data about customers and users than ever before.
Marketers today can analyze data from users’ Facebook posts, tweets, shares, site traffic, and so on. This is great for a consumer-marketing plan, but Big Data offers opportunities to trade marketers too. It gives you incredible insight into how to influence marketing decisions, do product advertising, and innovate. It helps you identify the best prospects more efficiently and find out their specific needs. Finding good prospects and addressing their needs is critical if you want to beat the competition.

Agile marketing strategies

Agile marketing, as defined by Experian, is the ability to adapt or refocus marketing effort quickly and successfully in response to changes in customer behavior, market conditions and business direction to benefit market share.  The key principles of agile marketing focus on creating remarkable customer experiences, responding quickly to change, and stronger alignment with business leaders and sales departments.

Most trade marketers today are pushing towards the idea of agile marketing, which focuses on improving the efficiency and flexibility of your marketing plan while improving its transparency, adaptability, and speed of flexibility.
Market trends change very quickly, and so must your marketing strategy. Your plan needs to be flexible enough to adapt to rapid changes in marketing trends. Agile marketing, which follows the principles listed ahead, can help you thrive and flourish.

• Faster market change responses instead of focusing on a fixed plan
• Small but rapid iterations instead of few bigger campaigns
• Making plans after thorough testing and data analysis, rather than relying on traditional conventions and opinions
• Focus on customer interaction instead of constant promotions to a target audience

Thus, an agile trade marketing strategy promotes faster action, better responsiveness, and a more collaborative way to run business.