Marketing Trends...Who Cares?

I sent out a mailer to my customers end of last year offering a free report on "10 Innovative Marketing Trends in 2009" or "How to Get 10% More Sales with 20% less Expenses".

Based on the response to date the latter won, by 7:1.

A customer, and SMB owner even called me to say,
"Tell me about what's new in six month time. For now I just want to buckled down and do better at what I do"

Its arguable, but I believe he has the right attitude. These days SMBs that are seriously affected by business cycles die off quickly....choosing to pack up rather than linger on fight for their creditors and shareholders!
Those that survive have businesses that are not seriously affected with good fighting chance right where they are... and they are not going to piss around with too much change and new ideas for the time being.

So the new marketing trends are probably good only for businesses or people looking for new ventures...those that may have ceased their business, gave up their jobs.

Once we adopt this somewhat "jaundiced view" many of the predictions about the "Hot Trends" by many authoritative sources (See Related Links) would seem highly improbable

2009 does not seem from our own survey as a year for change. New innovations that succeed would have be create savings without significant investments. Cleverness and ingenuity in exploiting existing resources would be appreciated much more than innovation and new technology.