Brand Strategy: How to Spot Trends in your Industry

By Yosef Solomon on Apr 1, 2010

What’s the next big thing? That’s what many business owners, marketers and industry execs ask themselves on a daily basis. As we continue to learn and discover new ways to spot trends, we must understand that their isn’t some surifire formula or static experiment that will reveal what’s next to come. The science of spotting trends can be a highly useful tool for various businesses and companies. In today’s rapidly changing world with millions of hyper-connected individuals sharing their lives on the web, trend-spotting has become much more personal.

Connecting directly to our target demographic through social media, word of mouth and permission marketing is essential to brand awareness. Not only will consumers buy your products, they will also act as our brand ambassadors, if our products are truly meaningful to them. So how do we go about creating meaningful campaigns? First, we must figure out what our potential consumers are looking for. This is where “How to Spot Trends in your Industry” comes in.

By identifying what your target demographic is currently doing, you can shape the way your message is delivered without changing the actual message. For example, a lot of rappers have embraced various social networks and right now Twitter seems to be the biggest buzz. Rappers are now able to directly communicate with their fans through this medium without changing their message. They noticed that the new trend with a lot of their listeners was tweeting on Twitter. A few years ago Myspace was the big buzz, but rappers understood that by adapting with their listeners they were able to stay relevant with their delivery (pun intended!).

This doesn’t only apply to the music industry. Restaurants are also capitalizing off of sites like Yelp and Groupon for customer attraction. In Los Angeles, Food trucks are the biggest craze and most of their profit is coming through Facebook and Twitter.

In the past, I’ve listed various tools, strategies and informative websites that help businesses spot trends. These are all helpful, but one must understand that execution of these strategies are just as important. Once we start seeing brand growth through execution, we are able to find new ways to market our brand.

The best part about staying relevant and understanding the hottest trends in our industry are the endless opportunities. From linking up with charitable organizations to bringing awareness to destructive diseases, the collaboration we’ve seen in Social Media is powerful. There are no boundaries to these movements and by doing what we want, we are able to affect who we want.