Marketing News Digest: April 2018

Another month has rushed by in a blur, which probably means you didn't catch all of the marketing news in April.  No worries, we have you covered with our monthly digest! So sit back with your favorite beverage and have a think about how April's stories might influence your marketing strategy for the rest of the year. Marketing News: April 2018

Here are some of the headlines you might have missed last month:

• Blis Survey Upends Popular Consumer Preference Theories: If there are two trends that marketers expect to see in every New Year list, it's personalization and popular causes. Getting closer to customers and supporting worthy causes are widely believed to be important to modern consumers, but a new study by mobile-location data company Blis turns those ideas on their head. It even goes so far as to suggest a new hierarchy of needs, which places product quality and price above all other considerations. Does this reflect what you're seeing in your marketplace?

• GDPR Starts to Sound the Alarm: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been on the horizon for almost two years, but only now is it really beginning to make headlines in the mainstream (who knew data security wouldn't set the pulses racing?!) With May 25th looming as the official start date for this new European legislation, it's important to make sure you understand why and how GDPR will impact your marketing efforts.

• MCI Reveals Confidence and Confusion in Equal Measure: The most recent Marketers' Confidence Index (MCI) reveals both optimism and uncertainty in execs during the first quarter of 2018. On the one hand, the marketers surveyed recorded the highest confidence measure in more than two years, demonstrating a belief that consumers would keep spending and their budgets would be maintained or increased. Sadly they showed less faith in their organizational ability to measure these efforts, with ROI and KPI alignment with strategy a notable concern.

• Regulating Cannabis Marketing: As we highlighted in March, marketing marijuana is really starting to take off now that the drug is achieving various degrees of locality across the United States. Unsurprisingly, regulations to guide this marketing have lagged behind the legalization of the product itself, leaving marketers to navigate a patchwork of state laws and limited guidelines from industry observers. That could soon change, according to the National Association of Cannabis Businesses (NACB), which has proposed its own set of advertising regulations bearing a strong resemblance to those governing the sale of tobacco and alcohol.

[search-tag] 

• Keep Up the Creative: AdAge announced the winners of its second-annual Creativity Awards, prompting no small amount of industry analysis and a catalyst for brands big and small to up their marketing game. Take a look at the creative content that won... what could you change to improve your marketing campaigns?

• City in the Middle: With all of the focus on hot startups and household name brands, it's easy to forget that there's a whole tier of companies in the middle of the growth stages that play a crucial role in the U.S. economy. The American Marketing Association presented an intriguing report from AMEX/Dun & Bradstreet that highlighted the most active locations for such companies and the cities in which middle-market companies are most likely to thrive. 
• A New Marketing Mix: Although new promotional channels like live video and the latest social media platforms are lauded as the future of marketing, it turns out that traditional formats remain the dominant group when it comes to spending an advertising budget. BIA/Kelsey data (above) highlights the importance of blending your marketing channels, given that 65% of local advertising revenue goes to traditional media. Where to start? Our article on the intersection of phone numbers and search marketing is as good a place as any!

• Where Your Content Comes From: Jumping significantly further back than April 2018, the team at Contently developed a compelling piece on the History of Content Marketing. Sure, most of it arrived after the millennium, as you might expect, but dating content initiatives back to 1897 makes for an interesting read... learn how we got here and why it's important to keep creating!

That's a wrap for another month of marketing!Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin if you want the latest industry news and views as they emerge.