Trendology Summary
5 min read ⌚
Building an Advantage through Data-Driven Real-Time Marketing
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: everything is marketing nowadays!
Whether it’s permission marketing, Facebook marketing, blog marketing, micromarketing, or marketing 3.0 – it seems like it’s the ultimate profession nowadays!
It’s the age of “how” – and not “what”! The product you’re actually selling is less important than how you sell it! And many books we’ve written about before can testify to this simple fact.
“Trendology” focuses on Twitter marketing – and joins the group. With few practical pieces of advice, you should heed.
Let’s summarize them!
Who Should Read “Trendology”? And Why?
It doesn’t matter whether you have already made a name for yourself and want to take it to the next level or you are just about to start building a brand. It doesn’t matter even if you’re the head of the marketing department or merely a staff member interested in advertising.
Either way, “Trendology” is just the book for you. All you need to have is an open mind for new technologies and concepts such as social media marketing (especially, Twitter). You don’t even need to know that much about them.
About Chris Kerns
Chris Kerns is a prominent digital marketing researcher, who has written many articles for “The New York Times,” “The Wall Street Journal,” “Forbes,” and “USA Today.” He worked as the VP of Research & Insights at Spredfast, and, since recently, at Domo.
He is also the author of few well-received fiction books.
Trendology Summary
People in the advertising business – they’re really good at inventing new words and catchphrases! And they stick!
For example, what’s the name Disney uses to describe the science of studying their guests? That’s right: guestology! How would you ever forget that?
And here’s another word of a similar kind: trendology. That’s how Chris Kerns calls the science of analyzing trends. See: he’s already a great practitioner of it!
We’re summarizing here a book of his, but his main focus is, in fact, modern media.
Why?
Because he believes that the advent of social media changed the world of marketing once and for all. Most importantly, it put an end to one-way messaging. Billboards, jingles, TV commercials – they did their time! Nowadays – marketing is all about real-time.
You see, social media allows for something traditional advertising couldn’t dream about: two-way discussions between sellers and customers as things are happening.
And you should use – and use it wisely!
A good example would be posting a tweet like “Nice pick! Packers fans, pick your favorite pizza now for only $10. bit.ly/tonyspizza #interception” after someone posts a tweet such as “OMG damn straight #goPackers #interception.” It’s clever, it’s funny, it’s cheap, it’s real-time – and it will work!
A bad one would be posting a tweet like “come and get your chicken today #getnuggetrocks” after someone posts a tweet like “I like reading these book summaries! #getnuggetrocks: It’s neither clever nor funny. It’s not relevant. And it’s barely real-time. It won’t work!
How do we know?
Because, unlike traditional advertising, real-time marketing (RTM) provides you with measurable data you can analyze and use to improve.
Whether it’s Twitter, YouTube or Facebook, and whether we’re talking about followers and retweets, or subscribers and likes, you should know exactly if your marketing strategy is working!
Social media success is measured as a combination of three factors – audience, engagement, shares. This means you must take them all into consideration if you want better results.
For example, if 100 of your 1,000 followers favorite your tweet – you’re doing more than fine! If, however, 100 of your 2 million followers do the same, then you need to do some refinement.
And, since Kerns mostly talks about Twitter, you can use one of three ways to improve your result. Namely, you can create original content and broadcast a new message to the Twitter community; or echo someone else’s message by retweeting it; or, finally, reply to a message and address your customer’s concerns in real-time.
Since things are happening really fast out there, you need to be fast as well if you don’t want to fall behind.
A good strategy to do this is to follow the micro-trends and use the trending topic of the day to boost your sales. Kerns analyzed 93 companies, and almost 70 percent of them benefitted from this practice. Amazon especially.
And if micro-trends work, you can imagine how well large event tweeting does! 58 out of the 100 most valuable world brands have noticed positive bumps and earned more than 350 percent more followers on average than companies who skipped large events and Twitter altogether.
Naturally, most of these valuable brands have whole teams nuancing their social media marketing strategies. So, don’t expect to succeed unless you shell out some cash for a great social media team!
A word of warning: the team doesn’t stand for a guy with a Twitter account!
It stands for a group of talented and knowledgeable people who are witty and hip and creative and responsible. An emphasis on the last one: since Twitter is happening in real-time, their hands must be united at all times and under any circumstance.
You can’t censor them or expect them to ask your approval. It won’t work.
Key Lessons from “Trendology”
1. Traditional Advertising Is Dead
2. Long Live Twitter!
3. Prepare Your RTM Strategy in Five Steps
Traditional Advertising Is Dead
Traditional advertising is a thing of the past. It’s a one-way message (from client to customer), it’s expensive, and it takes too much time in a world which is moving really fast. Time to reorient yourself: catch the RTM bandwagon!
(OK – don’t take us too literally! Of course, “Coca-Cola” will forever go on producing those ubiquitous and catchy Christmas commercials! But, even they have started finishing their commercials with a hashtag.)
Long Live Twitter!
Point taken: hashtags work better than traditional advertising no matter how valuable is your brand!
They communicate both ways, they cost next to nothing, and they produce new followers daily! Moreover, they provide you with measurable data which will help you improve.
Twitter was once imagined as “a status updater,” but it grew very soon to be Internet’s best way to share the news. Recently, it has grown as the world’s most convenient way to market your products!
Prepare Your Real-Time Marketing Strategy in Five Steps
Whether you should develop an RTM strategy should be a no-brainer. “Trendology” facilitates how in a five-step cyclical process: align, discover, prepare, execute & engage, analyze.
Aligning means lining up your RTM actions with the goals of your company. Discovering involves finding out everything that’s important beforehand (say, before a large event). Preparing requires getting ready for many possible scenarios.
Afterwards, you’re ready to execute and engage your program. The analysis afterward will tell you if you did well. And what you should do better next time.
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“Trendology” Quotes
The key to RTM is to have it seem spontaneous, but actually be well orchestrated behind the scenes for optimal customer engagement, risk management, and brand positioning. Click To Tweet For most big events, RTM works. Click To Tweet No matter where you stand on whether a brand should chime in on a political issue, it’s happening. Click To Tweet Without data, RTM can be chaos. Click To Tweet The pace of conversation has amplified, and pumping out the same pre-canned messaging doesn’t always resonate with the modern consumer. Click To Tweet
Our Critical Review
“Trendology” is both well-written and well-researched book about real-time marketing. Moreover, it’s one of the very few books which offer practical advice on how you should use Twitter to your benefit. It’s lauded and loved for a reason. Not to mention that it can bring you a lot of money.
Emir is the Head of Marketing at 12min. In his spare time, he loves to meditate and play soccer.
