Latest trends in Digital Marketing! Are they worth jumping on the bandwagon for?

Hey there everyone, so this will be my final post on digital marketing so I figured I had better pull out my tarot cards, crystal ball, and horoscope to try and look in to the future and give you some ideas on where Digital Marketing is headed. In my opinion as a avid Iphone user companies need to tap into the fact that everyone has smart phones these days so ‘make an app for that’ it will get your business directly into the hands of your consumer instead of just in their homes, and places of work or school (Where their lap top is).
Privacy is going to become more and more important to consumers and so targeting audiences specifically and effectively will be key for companies to actually be able to reach their consumers. Also privacy will require companies to rely on brands and networking as they wont be able to spam or randomly ‘reach’ new customers through pop up ads etc. For the same reason digital marketing will also be game or incentive based this means that technology will become king as whoever has the newest interactive tool, game or app will dominate the market.
To get around the privacy issue many organizations will team up with affiliates to attract consumers to products or services that they other wise wouldn’t be interested. For example “BRAVO (CBS), has partnered with cosmetics retailer Sephora to reward Foursquare users who unlock the Bravo Real Housewives badge, with $100 Sephora gift cards at select stores in New Jersey and New York over the next four weeks”. An example of how digital marketing will use networking is through brands, (many org.'s are already doing this), by creating connections with each other to reach consumers on various platforms for example “Disney sells ToyStory tickets on Facebook” (Marsden, 2010).



11 trends in Internet Marketing for 2011 from Dave Chaffey

Trend 1: Content / Engagement Strategy
We all know that “Content is King” was the mantra through the 1990s and then “Context was Queen”. Today we realise that exceptional content is the key to acquiring customers through search engine optimisation and social media as part of inbound marketing. It’s also essential to keep customers engaged with a brand via different touchpoints like the website, “social outposts”, email marketing and apps.
And of course, it’s not just text content, video content, podcasts, apps all to match all preferences. It’s been good to see increased attention on content strategy in 2010 with several new books on the topic. Since I believe it’s so important to success online, that’s why it’s Number 1.

Trend 2: Digital Marketing Optimisation
In the beginning there was search engine optimisation, then conversion rate optimisation and social media optimisation (hate that term). The analytical tools available to digital marketers enable analysis and optimisation of performance as provided by many agencies in these fields. Integration of toolsets through APIs and XML feeds has supported the growth of a rich set of free and paid tools. See the Google Analytics Application Gallery for the wealth of tools available.

Trend 3: Right Touching
Our prospects and customers increasingly use multiple channels when selecting products and services switching between digital media and traditional media. So it’s important to understand their preferences and facilitate switching from print to online and vice versa.
Since outbound contacts are still vital in selecting the right print or email message frequency and message according to position in the lifecycle helps repeat sales. Smart companies have developed an automated email lifecycle with the right business rules to maximise engagement and sale.

Trend 4: Social Media Marketing
You may have heard of this… People don’t go online to “surf the web” today, they “Facebook”. Every company needs a Facebook strategy and the right resources to manage it unless their brand is so badly perceived it will do more harm than good. Nestle? For other companies, B2B? Twitter may be more important. We’ll look at some examples that show that success in an individual social media is achieved by understanding what you want to achieve from each channel, a clear idea of the value proposition and then resourcing it to deliver. But it’s underpinned by having the right content and touch strategies to integrate with other channels.

Trend 5: The Resurgence of Display Advertising
Resurgence may be overstating it but many companies have found the newer remarketing and retargeting options available through established ad networks and Google’s new Adwords Remarketing feature effective. Using weighted attribution studies can also help establish the value of the display advertising halo effect.

Trend 6: Mobile Strategy
The growth in use of Apple App store has been phenomenal, increasing by several billions of downloads in 2010. Meanwhile other handset manufacturers are achieving success with apps, although Apple still has over two thirds of the market by download. See my post about mobile app strategy which summarises the growth and the options of app strategy.

Trend 7: Googlization
In many countries, including the UK Google still drives the majority of traffic or it should if you get your SEO and PPC right. It’s increasingly important for generating awareness and display through the new Googled Display (formerly content) network too which in 2010 saw remarketing added. Google is so important for most pureplays that you could say you need a specific “Google Strategy”. A Google strategy requires an intimate understanding of your online marketplace or ecosystem. Oftentimes partnering, PR and contextual advertising can help you by thinking beyond your own SERPs position.

Trend 8: Online Channel Integration
With growth of importance of social media channels it has been suggested that email marketing is dead or less relevant. My belief is the two work best in an integrated way. To get ideas on the best strategies to achieve this I recommend signing up to Social Email Marketing.

Trend 9: Touchpoint Attribution
Since online conversion to sale may occur over several site visits, it’s important to analyse and attribute sale to all of the channels that contributed, not just the last click. Online marketers have been grappling with this for a long time, but in 2010 these cases show that more companies got on top of this.

Trend 10: Privacy Wars
Many of the keys to success online have a dirty secret – they rely on cookies. From Google Analytics to Remarketing to on-site personalisation, persistent cookies are needed to track and target behaviour.
But the media are intent on scaring consumers about threats to their privacy so unless marketers take action we’re going to lose some of the greatest benefits of online medias which will negatively effect marketers.

Trend 11: Digital Marketing = Marketing?
We can no longer call digital media new now. With an increasing amount of media consumption and media spend migrating online, some are suggesting we don’t need a separate discipline of digital marketing, we don’t need separate digital strategies, but integration is the name of the game. What do you think?

Well that's all folks! I hope you learned something from my posts I know that I definitely have.