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

Four Optimization Truths

Website optimization should be an ongoing process and should be the subject of attention for every webmaster, regardless of the size, authority or age of the site itself. From a business development perspective, optimization is a “must do” activity within the online marketing arena. Feedback and interaction are essential ingredients for any business and without it, it is difficult to change with the times and to grow. For an online initiative, interaction and feedback can be difficult to achieve without making a concerted effort to gather it. As such, even if your site is in the very early stages of development or growth, optimization should be embraced.

Truth number one: you have more to gain that you have to lose. It’s no good assuming that you can just tread water until such time as you might have “more information” to work with, on the assumption that relatively low levels of traffic do not provide you with enough material. With even a relatively small amount of information, you can attribute leads to certain sources or conversions to certain actions and while you might not have the luxury of multiple methods of testing to see whether your assertions may be backed up, you can nevertheless focus on your positive areas as you are feeding new growth and not waste money during your delicate formative times.

Truth number two: you cannot do business unless you optimize, one way or another. Any marketing action of any kind is a process of optimization. Just doing business by placing an ad in a particular format, in a particular place and waiting for results, you have a set strategy. If your traffic levels are really low at this point you still need to record the results of your individual initiatives and develop your ongoing strategy accordingly.

Truth number three: you have plenty of tools to help you at every traffic level. We have advocated before that Google’s Webmaster tools are quality products that every site operator should familiarize him or herself with. The analytics program has a wealth of information, allowing you to drill down to analyze your traffic sources or set up conversion goals. Their optimizer duration calculator allows you to input different scenarios and see how long you could expect to wait before you achieve realistic results, based on your data.

Truth number four: you can always analyze something. If you do not have a significant number of conversions yet for a particular campaign, be aware that you do not have to have an A to Z breadcrumb trail to enable you to make some assumptions about your overall business. You can, for example, take a look at the way that people interact with your site, the pages that they jump to, your entry pages, whether they are getting to a particular page during a checkout process and then bailing out. Just because you do not have a cash conversion does not mean that you cannot make any changes to your site infrastructure or its logistics to better prepare for those converting days ahead.

What Optimization Truths have you discovered?

Matthew Toren