The Tray Way: Where will Marketing be in 2012?

The end of the year is approaching, which brings with it the end of procrastinating on planning for 2012. While we have a lot of great things to remember about 2011 - especially on the award front, we are looking forward to the opportunities that are ahead of us. So, what is the marketing community thinking about for this upcoming year? There is lots to read about, but one item that caught our eye was a recent press release out of the Midwest regarding forecasting marketing budgets.

According to research by Under the Radar, a Chicago-based firm, most U.S.-based marketing brand managers intend to increase their budgets in 2012, as well as plan to develop even more innovative marketing strategies. Other predictions include:

• Brand marketing managers are quite optimistic about the first half of 2012 and increasingly even more optimistic about the second half of the year.
• ROI will be a key focus, with results surpassing “brand image” in regards to how the budgets are broken out.
• The winners in 2012 will be those brands that can capitalize on innovative experiential marketing opportunities and treat each prospect as a unique customer.

Working with clients in many industry sectors, we agree that 2012 will see a demand for increased focus on the actual dollars-and-cents return that marketing investments are having. For some, this will mean finding the newest technology or platform and jumping full-board into it in hopes that it is the "silver bullet." However, we see this as an opportunity for an experienced firm that has an expertise in all forms of marketing processes to test new, innovative strategies on proven platforms. By continuing the process of integrating one or more current marketing techniques (print, web, social media, etc.), it allows marketing experts to be marketing experts and push a strategy forward, as opposed to research and learn about another platform that is based around potential. Additionally, by evolving and learning from what we know, this will allow for the opportunity to bring tried-and-true marketing processes back to the forefront.

In the end, if 2012 can keep pace with 2011 in the marketing landscape, we are in for an exciting year.

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The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages.

The Tray Way: Is There a Downside to Small Business Saturday?

For the 2nd year in a row, the unofficial holiday of Small Business Saturday was celebrated, falling between its more famous siblings of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The day is meant to give attention to small businesses in cities and town across the country and provide them a chance to compete for the billions of dollars spent during this long weekend. In truth, small businesses employ half of all private sector employees in the country and should be recognized for their contribution to the economy and society.

The event received tremendous support - as expected - from business organizations across the country, and even President Obama endorsed the movement. However, some found a problem with this ideas for a simple reason: Small Business Saturday was created by a big business, namely American Express.

The question then became whether this seemingly altruistic movement was truly a scheme to promote the advantages a multi-national organization can offer. As marketing experts that work with businesses small and large, our simple response is, "Yeah, and....."

In our last post on the Tray Way blog, we discussed how NBC saw increased ad sales revenue during GreenWeek, begging the question of whether improving profits and being socially responsible is ok. This situation is similar. American Express, through an intelligent marketing strategy, discovered an opportunity to help themselves by promoting others, and not just others, but a niche that many Americans support. This effort is similar to how many feel about Valentines Day, and how certain industries take advantage of the concept of love and relationships for financial gain (sure, the greeting card and flower industry are benefiting, but who is going to be against love?).

In truth, the marketing strategy that American Express created was so smart and clever that it feels like there should be something wrong with it. But, we would like offer this thought: Be OK with it. Small businesses across the country were helped this past Saturday, and if that meant that American Express saw a benefit also, well maybe they deserve it for leading the charge.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw gigantic numbers this year, and while it is difficult to determine the exact success of Small Business Saturday, the fact that the phrase and hashtag saw tremendous use in the days and weeks beforehand means that "word of mouth" was extremely strong. It is our hopes that this movement continues, and we hope to be an even bigger part of it next year.

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The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our organization's capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages.