Has this market caused you to go beyond head scratching to hair pulling?

Well here are a few trends I've been picking up on to help you make those all important positioning decisions, followed by a checklist that you may find handy.

 

<Access Mail on the left, to receive brand info in your e-mail.

1. Meet the iCrowd This uber-consumer cloud has become focused, nimble and intelligent.

Some Trends:

1. Perception is in the eye of the beholder.
2. Brands are built on the accessibility of information about them, not on information controlled by them.
3. Facebook type communication will continue to replace personal email.
4. There will be less and less consumer tolerance for registrations.
   Services like Facebook, Connect, PayPal and OpenID will become login portals.
5. Organizations will continue to employ special interest groups to get their message across. The Consumer Watchdog is now a pack.
6. Smarter marketers will identify and capitalize on unmet expectations in the market.
7. Old tricks don’t work anymore. Emotional hype and insincere celebrity pairings do more harm than good. Consumers do not believe a free offer anymore; and after you've made it they also no longer trust you.
8. Social Media has already proved itself to the consumer. Customers trust you based on feedback from other people.
   Social Media gives the consumer a very long memory of good brand experience, as well as bad.

---

2. Digital Mechanics Complexity is now the norm. But Complexity can be both managed and levered.

Some Trends:

1. Nested Content
   Your brand needs to be referenced in as many content aggregation sites as possible.
2. Buzz Tracking
   The Brand Manager's job increasingly will be to track the on-line buzz around their brands.
3. Video Content and Information Art
   Online video is interactive, memorable, widely accessible, cheap to create and highly shareable.
   Capturing and serving information to the consumer is becoming an art form.
   The demand for rich, brand-extending experiences will continue to increase. 
4. CRO
   Conversion rate optimization will dominate Search Engine Optimization next year.
   Brands will focus on improving conversion over time.
5. Building Communities
   'Tribalization of Business' study released by Deloitte, says that 94% of businesses will continue or increase their investment in online communities and social media.
6. Free Floating Social Tools
   Applications like Google Wave, Sidewiki, internal website viewer preferences, on-line help chat and web searches will start to dominate serious brand / consumer interaction.
7. Advertising to the Social Sphere
   The age of advertising the "big idea" is over. The consumer is looking for a brand that fits into his social sphere.

---

3. Awareness? Mere brand Awareness is not enough. You are looking for both Credibility and Engagement

Some Trends:

1. Street Credibility
   1. Brand awareness follows its buzz. A brand with the right street credibility can go viral in days.
   2. Conversation and community are increasingly important, and if consumers trust the community that trusts the brand, they will extend trust to the brand.
   3. Word of mouth is a brand filter that does a lot of harm to inferior brands. Especially now since it is digitally equipped.
   4. Consumers talk with each other before talking with brands.
2. Engagement
   Consumer engagement is becoming harder to do but it's producing greater rewards than ever.

---

4. Your checklist So what can you do to reach the iCrowd? Â

Some Suggestions:

Make media content (like Twitter and Facebook, and perhaps YouTube) part of someone's job. Put links to your Twitter and Facebook accounts on your e-mails, Website, letterheads and advertising.

Create a Wikipedia page and a Google search page for your business, if there is not one already, update it and reference it in your communication.

Make sure that your website is Content Managed and that some of the senior managers in your organization are managing at least some of your website content directly.

Do a Google search on your business name followed by the word "review".

Interact with reviews and reviewers as if they were customers wherever you find them.

Answer comments on your companies' Facebook profile.

Get and read your website stats. Look especially at the successful search links that come from Google and other search engines.

Host a controlled client Forum on your company website.

Consider creating some video or Flash Info-Art content.
Some examples of cost effective content:
Priceline - hugely entertaining low budget Flash animations and William Shatner combinations.
Apple's "Mac vs. PC" campaign is another good example.

Build an Online Community - Facebook can help you do this but it is better to be able to control it on your own website.
This is still a great marketing tool despite the trend away from registrations.

Have an e-mail strategy. Despite the trend away from e-mail registration it it still the most effective and cheapest marketing tool.

Look for an existing interest group that could help your business.

Loose the emotional pull in your campaigns: "we're all in this together", "we're practically family" style messages; the iCrowd has cut the heart strings.
Also re-consider using famous people in your promotions.
Most importantly don't do the "once in a lifetime" type offers any more.

Run a targeted Facebook advertising campaign.

Have a social network share button on every content page of your website.

Don't be scared to re-brand. This is not a market that rewards a brand for it's consistency,
the iCrowd rewards a brand for it's compatibility.

Interact on industry web forums, suggest your brand's solutions.