Episode 48
Future-Proofing Your Marketing Strategy
You've probably heard that marketing is "constantly evolving." So, as we create our strategic plans for 2025 and beyond, what should we keep in mind to "future-proof" our strategies? In today's episode, I'm sharing how you can create growth strategies that work now and in the future.
Specifically, I share:
- The fundamental components of marketing that never change.
- How to create a strategy that adapts to changes.
- Trends to watch for in 2025 (and beyond).
Mentioned in This Episode:
- Send me your future predictions, concerns, and excitement: hello@growthpod.fm
- Listen to Jesse's Episode on Building Brand Distinction
Let’s Connect!
Work With Me: growthdirective.com
About Angela
Angela Frank is a fractional CMO with a decade-long track record of generating multimillion-dollar marketing revenue for clients. She is the founder of The Growth Directive, a marketing consultancy helping brands create sustainable marketing programs.
Her new book Your Marketing Ecosystem: How Brands Can Market Less and Sell More helps business owners, founders, and corporate leaders create straightforward and profitable marketing strategies.
Angela is the host of The Growth Pod podcast, where she shares actionable tips to help you build a profitable brand you love.
Transcript
On The Growth Pod, I, along with some of the coolest experts in business, share tips designed to help you build a profitable business that you love. So if you're like me and love learning about how to grow your business more efficiently, you've come to the right place. I hear it all the time.
reate our strategic plans for: ge and trends to watch for in:Let's start with my favorite topic to chat about, which is how marketing is the same today as it was when it was first invented.
The story goes that in ancient Mesopotamia there was a brick maker whose market became saturated with cheap bricks after shops were able to make them quicker and cheaper before, but cheap bricks were inferior in quality to his handmade ones.
So being a savvy businessman, he stamped his bricks with a symbol to signify that these bricks came from his shop and more importantly, that stamp was a guarantee to their qual quality. If a brick was faulty, buyers could bring it back for a new brick free of charge and suddenly his bricks were selling like hotcakes.
His stamp theory worked and this story is the origin of marketing, with the stamp or the mark that he placed on his bricks becoming the brand of his bricks and the messaging around him the quality guarantee his marketing. This story was originally shared in Marketing for Super Villains, whose author Jesse Wroblewski, I interviewed earlier this year.
I'll link his episode in the description if you'd like to check.
And while this story is cute, it also shows that the fundamental elements of marketing haven't changed since marketing was first invented thousands of years ago.
At the end of the day, marketing consists of three key components understanding who your customers are, messaging about your product or service, and encouraging your prospects to buy. And these three components don't change over time.
So if you're setting out to create a future proof strategy for your brand, really Understanding these three areas will be critical to your success. And it's exactly why, when I set out to create a marketing strategy for a client, I always start with these three elements.
So now that we know the fundamentals of marketing are a constant, let's look at how marketing does change. Because as you've probably heard, marketing is constantly evolving. It's true. But if the fundamentals don't change, what exactly is changing?
was living in a cabin between:Back then, you can imagine things were very different. And the primary ways that people marketed was through the newspaper, or what's now known as field marketing.
Literally showing up in a town and sharing that you've got a product to sell. Direct mail and catalogs weren't even a thing in Thoreau's time.
That started in:So advertisers were primarily relying on billboard, print and radio advertising to promote their products. And since then, advertisers have had to adopt too many new platforms, even within just the past couple of years.
With new advertising platforms becoming widely available for use, and with each new platform, even though the three main elements of marketing, knowing your customers, messaging and persuasion remain the same, there are nuances that need to be used to adapt to each of these platforms. For example, you could run the same ad in a newspaper as you could on TikTok.
big trends on the horizon for:Well, the most important thing that I'm keeping an eye on is how AI will impact search results.
You've probably seen by now that when you Google anything, there's a snippet that appears at the top of the search results, sharing everything that you need to know about what you've searched for. And you don't ever need to leave the page.
The biggest impact this will have, I think, is on organic traffic, because people no longer have a reason to click through and read more on your website.
And while this creates a great user experience, the impacts that this is going to have on organic and even paid search results over the next year I think is going to be critical. And though the impact remains to be seen, I'm anticipating this will entirely shift search strategies across the board.
So what I'm encouraging my clients to do to future proof their strategy is to double down on content, specifically on social media channels.
And also if a client comes to me and they're advertising solely on paid search, I'm also encouraging those clients to begin testing into paid social so they have a pivot strategy in place in case this impacts the cost of appearing in the search results. At the end of the day, it's my job to make sure that my clients have a high performing marketing strategy.
ges. So let's now look beyond:It's really hard to say what exactly will take place because there are so many new things coming to the market all the time that impact the way advertisers are able to spread their message, but I can spot a few trends.
One is there will be a heavier reliance on social media marketing in general, not just because of the implications that I mentioned for paid search and organic search, but just because people are continuing to spend more and more time on social media.
And so it sense, regardless of what's happening in Google land, to make sure that you are beefing up your content strategy in general to really take advantage of all the eyeballs that can be seeing your marketing.
I also anticipate an increased importance of the personal brand, not just for founders or business owners or sales representatives, but even for employees trying to make sure that they get the best jobs possible. I think having a high value personal brand will only become more relevant in the future.
Another thing that is on the horizon is the increased use of AI generated content.
We've already seen it, but it's up in the air whether this will be a win for marketers or if it's going to create more challenges for attribution and understanding your performance data as AI bots begin interacting more heavily with content online and appearing more and more like a human. So I think that it could either be a huge win or a huge pain in the butt. We will see.
The other thing is always changing, which is new advertising platforms, new tools and new features that continue to become available for marketers as advertising platforms find more ways to monetize their audience. Now I want to know what you're keeping an eye on for the future.
Is there anything that's concerning or exciting, you send me an email@hellorowrowthpod fm and let me know. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Growth Pod. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.
