10 Timeless Marketing Strategies from Keywords!

The IT industry is said to progress rapidly, but marketing also progresses quickly. As IT and the internet play a major role in future business, their advancement naturally brings evolution to business methods. However, the current situation is that there are still few people who truly understand the latest marketing. Therefore, we have picked up what we believe to be the latest methods and keywords in marketing at this stage. If you are not familiar with them, we hope this will help you understand.

1. Inbound Marketing

Traditionally, marketing has been conducted using a method called outbound. It primarily involves placing advertisements in mass media such as TV commercials, newspapers, and radio. However, outbound marketing often exposed advertisements to people who didn't want to see them or weren't interested in the target products or services, often leading to them being treated as an annoyance. Inbound marketing is the opposite, based on the idea of 'creating connections and leading to the purchase of products and services by disseminating information that users are interested in.'

The main method is to create web media and disseminate information. People who are interested visit the media and engage with the information. If interesting information continues to be disseminated, users become repeat visitors and fans of the media. Later, items and services aligned with the disseminated information are recommended, leading to purchases. Users who have had a wonderful experience with the items or services recommend them and start disseminating information themselves.

It would be good to consider the flow described above. This requires content creation skills to identify user interests and disseminate information without straying too far from the items and services you want to sell. It is a natural and gentle marketing approach for users, unlike the traditional pushy method.

2. Ambassador

Among product and service users, those who use them with particular affection are called 'Ambassadors'. Companies welcome such ambassadors as part of their team and have them play a role in expanding products and services in conjunction with corporate activities. Ambassadors conduct public relations activities from a user's perspective, such as holding events related to products and services, or writing about services on their own media like blogs and SNS. The rewards and benefits of becoming an ambassador depend on the specific program established by the company. Programs such as the Evarnote Ambassador Program and Nescafé Ambassador fall into this category.
The activities of Evarnote Ambassadors are as described above. However, in the case of Nescafé Ambassadors, household coffee machines are provided to users for free, and they are encouraged to purchase coffee refills, thereby approaching a community of coffee lovers. Ambassadors also have the opportunity to comment on the service itself and corporate activities, and make suggestions for products and services strictly from a user's perspective.

3. Attribution

There are several types of advertisements to raise awareness, such as mass advertising and online advertising, but attribution is a method of removing all those frameworks and measuring their effects. Advertisements influence each other. It's not just TV for TV, magazines for magazines, or websites for websites. There are conversions that occur precisely because TV and magazines influence each other, and conversions that arise because websites and newspapers work together. Nowadays, analyzing user behavior leading to conversion solely by measuring individual media and advertising effects will not yield correct conclusions. It is meaningful to meticulously analyze what actions users took across the entire marketing effort and how they ultimately reached purchase and usage.
In recent years, with the advancement of the internet and technology, it has become possible to acquire detailed user behavior data. By meticulously analyzing this user behavior data, we can understand which advertising methods are most effective and how they work. Overall analysis allows us to trace a more effective path to achieving our goals.

4. Social Listening

Various statements about products and services can be found on the internet. These are statements generated on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and blogs. User-generated statements have various characteristics, both negative and positive, and it is considered important to gather and analyze these statements from the internet. Before the development of social media, consumer opinions were collected through marketing companies and surveys and used for marketing. Complaints, opinions, and feedback received by call centers also fall into this category. Currently, by searching for product or service names on the internet and collecting related opinions and feedback, it has become possible to gather word-of-mouth data that can be effectively utilized for analysis.
There are also tools for social listening analysis, so it would be good to research them. They automatically collect and analyze phrases related to keywords from the internet. However, simply introducing a tool does not mean you can effectively utilize social listening data. It requires the ability to meticulously analyze the collected information and connect it to answers on how to improve products and services. Instead of sticking solely to tools, cultivate the ability to look at the data yourself and derive answers with imagination.

5. Ethnography

Needs hidden in people's subconscious cannot be unearthed through simple surveys or research. Therefore, ethnography is an attempt to uncover true needs by entering a group, observing and analyzing its activities over a long period. For example, a company providing a free call and chat app reportedly participated in student classes and seminars, analyzed how students used their smartphones during seminars, and discovered areas for improvement. They improved the app so that important information could be retained by "pinning" important posts during chats, and this discovery is said to be the effect of ethnography. They identified the problem from student life that important information quickly gets lost as the timeline progresses, making it difficult to check schedules and such.
In an era where simple surveys are no longer sufficient, long-term observation of a group is highly valued for uncovering needs.

6. O2O

This refers to an attempt to guide people offline, primarily based on information disseminated online. It means "Online to Offline." For example, distributing coupons via email or a system where points earned through online shopping can also be used in physical stores fall into this category.
However, what is effective in O2O is not just promoting store visits through coupon distribution. Often, the goal is to provide personalized services to individual customers by acquiring membership information from the company's online services. For example, what if a system were created where customers input various information, including their preferences and personality, and receive coupons in return? This would enable stores to provide services, including the discovery and timing of coupons, based on knowing the customer's characteristics. This means being able to respond more closely to an individual's personality than before.
Furthermore, services may be offered in a behavior-specific manner, such as distributing an app and sending coupons only to customers near the store, or offering a coupon when a company logo is photographed via the app. This is also effective when developing services tailored to the customer's situation and characteristics upon their visit.

7. Gamification

What do you feel when you play games? In fact, the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment felt when playing games are also effective in marketing. When you break down the emotions felt when playing games, feelings such as "quantification of actions," "visualization of progress," and "provision of a sense of accomplishment" arise. With these emotions, people feel that games are "fun." What would happen if the fun of games were applied to marketing?
For example, users register as members, and their "level" increases or "titles" are awarded based on the purchase amount of products and services. It is also possible to bring changes to the services offered using these levels and titles. Also, do you remember a service called Nike+? When you use sports shoes compatible with Nike+, the distance you ran and other data are recorded on your iPod. The recorded data could be posted on the homepage, so there was a game-like element in being able to compete with friends.
By incorporating gamification, it is possible to "revitalize communities," "promote repeat business," "improve site navigation," and "strengthen branding," among other things.

8. Big Data

Data storage technology has evolved dramatically in recent years. It has become possible to acquire and store vast amounts of data that could not be handled before, and to utilize them in marketing. Now, location, behavioral patterns, SNS, GPS, weather, any kind of data can be quantified depending on the mechanism. Depending on the item, even physical conditions such as health status and sleep can be quantified.
For example, a convenience store's point card. Through the point card, information on what was purchased is collected. This allows for analysis of products from various angles, such as when each product sells and which products have high repeat purchases. What if we add weather and location to that? From a vast amount of data, we can uncover customer needs that could not be found conventionally, such as which products sold on rainy days, and what sold at which store at what time. Furthermore, with cards that can be used at various stores and services, like the T-Point card, a lot of data can be acquired, such as where fuel was purchased, where parking was used, and where food was bought.
However, because the data to be analyzed is enormous, imagination and high analytical skills are required to find the true answers. In recent years, the profession of "data scientist" has begun to be highlighted, and data scientists are professionals who analyze big data. In other words, dealing with vast amounts of data, to the extent that a specialized profession has emerged, requires individual capabilities.

9. Data Scientist

In the era of big data, it is even called "the sexiest job of the 21st century." Thanks to technological advancements, various phenomena and actions can now be quantified. However, linking and analyzing vast amounts of data requires advanced analytical skills. This is where data scientists come in. They are individuals who possess IT knowledge, are well-versed in statistics and marketing, and have a captivating imagination, enabling them to derive various possibilities and proposals from vast amounts of data. While it will become a very important profession in the future, there are very few such professionals, so at this stage, training personnel who can work as data scientists is an urgent task.
In addition to IBM and Ogilvy (advertising) offering training courses for companies, Rikkyo University's Faculty of Business, Keio University's SFC Research Institute, and Tama University's Graduate School of Business have also announced the establishment of "Data Scientist Training Courses." In the future, whether companies can have personnel capable of handling big data internally is likely to be a key factor in marketing.

10. CMO

CMO is an abbreviation for Chief Marketing Officer, referring to the highest-ranking executive in marketing. The role of a CMO is to define the role and scope of in-house marketing, as well as to promote, activate, and implement marketing. In other words, it is a core position for driving a company's marketing. It is a crucial position, so essential that it's no exaggeration to say it can determine a company's fate. However, in Japanese companies, CMOs are almost non-existent. Only 5% of companies overall have a CMO. In contrast, in the United States, which is at the forefront of marketing, 62% of companies have a CMO. The very absence of a person to oversee overall marketing is even said to be contributing to the decline in the competitiveness of Japanese companies.
The fundamental qualities of a CMO are extensive business and marketing experience, combined with the 'right-brain' ability to effectively manage advertising and creative agencies as partners, and the 'left-brain' ability to analyze big data and formulate strategies numerically. However, since talent possessing both is almost non-existent, they usually accomplish missions in collaboration with assistants. If their right-brain ability is weak, a team skilled in creativity will assist; if their left-brain ability is weak, a team strong in analysis will assist. In any case, the absence of a position to oversee and implement marketing will directly lead to a decline in the marketing capabilities of Japanese companies in the future. 

Summary

Above, I introduced some keywords that caught my attention in marketing from 2013-2014. It's evident that with the advancement of IT technology, various devices have emerged, and the data that can be acquired, necessary positions, and ways of thinking have increased. While it can be said that few companies in Japan currently understand and implement the latest marketing methods, this precisely means there's an opportunity to achieve more in business by understanding and applying cutting-edge logic. Some things can be implemented immediately, while others cannot, but many things can be accomplished depending on the idea. I hope you will incorporate these into your corporate activities and utilize them for future business development. Surely, something new will come into view.