Online Marketing Trends for 2010

We’re often asked where we see trends emerging and especially at this time of year, with a virtual clean slate ahead of us. 2009 was certainly a revealing year and if nothing else, helped to show us how Internet marketing is here to stay, as the industry in general trended upward during the brutal recession. While many organizations may have reduced their total marketing spend, the ratio of funding allocated to online initiatives markedly increased.

While economists and other soothsayers predict that the business world will aim for solidity and cautious growth during 2010, it is worth keeping an eye on the emergence of certain trends to help you plan your online and Internet marketing endeavors through the months ahead.

Video is a very strong online medium and should be incorporated in your plans as soon as possible. While a picture tells 1000 words, a video can be even more powerful and if you portray the right message to the right people, you can end up with a significantly enhanced return on your video marketing investment. Don’t just create videos outlining what you do or why, but show real-world examples of how you can benefit the potential client and make sure that your creations are adequately marketed. It’s no good just showing these videos on your website home page, you should create a YouTube channel or go for more detailed video marketing, using one of the many great services available to you online.

Mobile marketing is certain to take significant steps forward in 2010. We have seen recent moves by Google to incorporate mobile advertising platforms and to help them increase their long reach into our smartphone fueled worlds. While it’s not necessarily time for you to run out and purchase your “dot mobi” domain name and associated web presence, keep an eye how your clients and potential customers interact with their mobile devices. This is without a doubt going to be a very dynamic environment this year.

Social media will continue to carve its own important niche in the marketing world and by the end of the year will have gained even more relevance. We hope that it will not be called “new media” by that time and that each of you will have a concerted, interactive presence and be clear about your objectives.

In the world of search engine optimization, micro-targeting is the next big thing. Search engine algorithms are becoming so smart, so dedicated to providing webmasters with workable results, that it will pay you well to ensure that your site, blogs and all online properties are highly optimized from a content perspective. More than ever, fresh content will be required and it must be good content, too.

While talking about trends, look at Google Trends frequently. At the time of writing, two of the top three hot trends are internet – related: the new Google Nexus One phone and the rumors swirling around the Apple iSlate tablets.

Matthew Toren

Realize the Potential of New Media

New media surely isn’t new anymore, although if it is new to you, you are in danger of getting behind the curve. In the space of only a few years the power of the Internet has exploded like an ancient volcano, tending to cover a company’s well honed marketing structure with molten lava or ash. In the face of the new media onslaught, you should not try and desperately dig out your old marketing plans from underneath all those layers of ash, but you should embrace the potential and understand that we are now doing business in a very different world.

Traditional forms of media, print ads, television, radio, cold calling, promotional gimmicks and the like will all have their place in our future, but they must not be front and center anymore. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have, whether it is traditionally a complete “bricks and mortar” style operation, you must now have an online presence and a proactive one at that.

It is somewhat ironic that a medium as “faceless” as the Internet has in many respects turned us all into more personable and identifiable business people. The advent of social media means that there is now a human face to the corporate body and each organization should ensure that it engages social media this way. Never forget the social element, even though you are primarily focused on doing business. You may have a corporate persona, but people want to know about the human side of the business now.

Put every effort that you can into designing your website well. You must be super targeted when it comes to your keywords, the way that you describe your business. In a highly competitive business environment you need to set your organization apart and must focus on specific or long tail keywords and keyword phrases. Construct your website and optimize it so that your business stands out among its competition. Everything points back to your company website from a marketing perspective.

While your corporate website should adequately reveal who you are, what you do and why people should buy from you, including the ability to do so (a sales funnel), you should also have an educational and informative site for your business, through the maintenance of a top-quality blog. This is your opportunity to show just how much of an expert you are in your niche and don’t hold back when it comes to giving good advice, education or information. Your objective here is to reveal that you are “good guys” and that people should trust you, ultimately, to buy products or services to help assuage their needs.

Interact with social media platforms and do it well. You should have a Facebook page for your business, a Twitter presence, even your own branded YouTube where you show videos of products, services, solutions – video is a hot medium these days. Set aside time to maintain your social presence on a very regular basis. Don’t just set it up and believe that you have done everything you need to. These platforms and channels can work well for you, if you work at them.

Create good content, regularly and distribute it for maximum marketing effect. Once again, the more that people begin to realize that you know what you’re talking about, through the provision and distribution of such targeted content, the more they will believe that they should trust their hard-earned dollars to you when it comes to buying your associated products or services.

Are you still digging ash, or engaged?

Matthew Toren

Send Money with Paypal and Facebook

PayPal has become pally with Facebook recently and you can now send money to people right from your Facebook site. All you need is your e-mail address and PayPal takes care of all the rest. Here is the link to the PayPal page within Facebook where you can get started.

It seems that Facebook is starting to get quite serious about its monetization. You can of course interact with Facebook financially right now, as you buy advertising space through their credit card portal, for example. They have been rumored for some time to have been looking at a “Facebook payments” program and it is only a matter of time before we start to see highly targeted and personalized advertisements appear on our Facebook homepages.

PayPal Send Money has a fan page on Facebook. This takes their level of customer service to another degree, as you can post your questions and concerns on the wall and receive a timely response from a PayPal employee. More and more people will be introduced to PayPal this way and they now allow money to be transferred to a total of 65 different countries around the world in 17 different currencies.

This development comes amid a rumor mill of Facebook versus PayPal stories circulating the web. When Facebook allowed some of its users to buy virtual and physical gifts through its new “gift shop,” this was seen as a direct shot against PayPal, still a leader in Internet based sales. The rumors were further fueled when Facebook hired Prashant Fuloria, one of the key designers of the Google Checkout platform, and other would-be PayPal competitors. Indeed, the biggest news appear to be that for the first time tangible gifts could be purchased through Facebook’s initiative, rather than just virtual gifts. Four developers were participating in the gift shop tests, including American Greetings Interactive, Greetbeatz, Somecards and Real Gifts, the latter providing physical gifts of candy or flowers.

The so called “alpha” test of the Facebook gift shop was said to be, by a Facebook spokesperson, simply a test “to explore possible new ways for users to share with their friends around birthdays and special occasions.” This latest news would appear to point toward a collaboration between PayPal and Facebook, rather than a direct competition. What was once termed to be a “PayPal killer” could in fact turn into a lucrative association for all parties. With 300 million monthly active users, Facebook could be poised to make significant income from a “Facebook payments” program. Meanwhile, Google Checkout remains curiously subdued in the background…

Matthew Toren

Technology Highs of 2009

Doesn’t it seem as if the pace of technology change is accelerating? We live in exciting times as we are actually seeing the way that we interact and communicate change before our very eyes. Who is to say where we will be in 10 years time at the end of this new decade, as so much has happened in the world of technology in 2009 alone.

Twitter, as a way of communication, has become mainstream, as witnessed by search engine giant Bing’s revelation that Twitter was the second most searched topic of the year. Companies are really finding how powerful this medium can be, so long as they’re able to dig through the irrelevancy that can threaten to overtake it and get through to their targeted markets. Twitter still faces a challenge to keep the attention of those who initially expressed an interest, as only 5% of Twitter users can be described as being deeply involved.

Since Apple launched its iPhone, the face of personal communication technology has changed almost out of all recognition. Telecom giant AT&T can in large part thank Apple for this invention and for the exclusive deal that allowed AT&T to market the iPhone and really turn around the company’s profitability. During 2009 alone the iPhone has exploded into popular culture and the ubiquitous “app” has become almost an addiction for many. Tens of thousands of applications are available for the iPhone or the iPod on almost every conceivable topic or subject. The other smartphone providers are really scrambling to catch up.

Cloud computing really started to capture our imagination this year. We think that it will accelerate as we go through 2010 as it gives users a tremendous amount of flexibility and allows them to further break away from the shackles of a desktop computer system. Surely at some time in the not-too-distant future we will be using third-party service via the Internet to run all our applications. Would you bet, with Google, that the operating system of the future should be essentially just a glorified browser? Cloud computing allows users to access only what they need, can be scaled relatively simply and quickly and can be a great way to operate your business by trimming the fat and only using what you really need.

When Microsoft and Yahoo collaborated to form Bing, it wasn’t too long until it was announced that real-time search results would be available, through a collaboration with Twitter. Google followed quickly thereafter and Facebook is in the picture too, as our social media revolution continues to gather steam.

Helping to quench our ravenous thirst for information, the enterprising Amazon introduced us to Kindle, a cool piece of technology that allows us to download full-length novels wherever we should be, several at a time if need be and to read them at our leisure. The Kindle device fits neatly in the palm of your hand and you can adjust the size and rendition of the text according to your comfort level. Amazon reports that its customers bought more Kindle books than physical books on Christmas Day this year, as the downloading frenzy continues.

What buzzed your interest in ’09?

Adam Toren

Unusual Uses for Google Wave

Google Wave continues to enthrall and confuse at the same time. This is a whole new line of communication and is fundamentally much more than just a revision of the basic e-mail concept, as some have said. E-mail as we know it is basically a static concept – distributing notifications back and forth, where they reside in a “box” as a dead object until somebody responds by creating a similar static object, which in turn is distributed for further action. A wave is more like a collaboration, which can be in real time, between interested parties. The concept can be discussed, elaborated, enlarged and supported and made available for input from any number of interested parties. While we are only just getting used to the concept of social communications through the likes of Twitter and Facebook, a wave is likely to represent a far more interactive and real-time collaboration between participants. For many people, it’s concept is still somewhat alien and in truth we have nothing to compare it to as yet.

Google Wave is still in the process of development, but a number of really cool uses have emerged to support its potential. While the heading of this blog refers to “unusual uses,” the fact is that every use of this emerging medium is innovative and while some are still trying to decipher how to really use a wave for best effect, others seem to have hit on some productive reasons.

Topically, the group responsible for distributing H1N1 vaccine for the dreaded swine flu realized that they were allocating a considerable amount of time and wasted resources to meetings and other disjointed two-way conversations. They relied heavily on e-mails, instant messages and so on between distribution points, administrators, scientists and overseers. By setting up a wave, they would all be able to work simultaneously on an issue, cutting through all those duplications and the needless checking of documentation, allowing the message to get out to the public and other interested parties very much faster.

At a tech savvy conference called Ecomm, wave accounts were doled out to attendees who could then collaborate in real-time and interact with content as it was being presented. Fundamentally, a wave would first be created by an audience member and then others could edit its content on the fly. This resulted in a far more detailed and richer transcript, enabling fresh thoughts and points of view to be recorded while they were most appropriate. This type of approach will undoubtedly result in a much more accurate and productive rendition of an interactive conference.

In an airport, so much information needs to be shared between so many people and can be the subject of critical safety awareness. An air traffic control wave could incorporate real-time weather updates, particular ground delays or situations, construction problems or data from other parts of the country affecting arrivals. Generally, being able to keep everyone abreast of situations as they arise (or even before) can only help to achieve efficiencies within such a time critical environment.

Potential applications for waves are almost limitless, as soon as the public in general becomes more comfortable with the actual concept. Adoption is likely to take some time, though.

Do you currently “wave” at anybody?

Matthew Toren

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