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Social media marketing
You are getting closer and closer to your prospects with social media networks. It’s so crowded and informative that you have to devise more effective and actionable plans to get your ideas working.
In a survey conducted: the number-one advantage of social media marketing (by a long shot) is generating exposure for the business, indicated by 85% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic (63%) and building new business partnerships (56%). (Source: http://marketingwhitepapers.s3.amazonaws.com/SocialMediaMarketingReport2010.pdf)
The key here is to put aside conventional marketing techniques and try to get along with your prospects, and understanding their very specific like and dislikes.
Smart online advertising
Glocalization of ads and campaigns
Through the internet you are talking to a global audience, so do you think that one ad fits all needs? The crux here is to design ads based on local tastes and culture so that you improve the effectiveness of these ads. Studying the local search trends and optimizing your marketing for those keywords is important.
Informative marketing
Sales ads are passé the need of the hour is to deliver quality and relevant information to your prospects and draw them to you. You can opt for articles, blogs, forums, videos and so on. The key is to get identified, as someone who provides quality information rather than projecting a salesman kind of image. According to Adology’s survey 45% of businesses plan to use online video in their marketing in 2011 vs. 28.4% in 2010.
Web and mobile analytics
This will always be a trend that keeps on renewing. All the marketing, campaigns, optimizations will become semi-productive if new innovative ways aren’t adopted for analyzing visitors. And with smart phones engaging customers most times of a day, mobile analysis is getting the much needed importance. Marketers would need to invest in digital analytics to great optimization of their marketing initiatives.
Mobile marketing
Among the 300,000 odd mobile phones sold in the first quarter of 2010, 50,000 were smart phones, and its sales alone are set to overtake PC sales by 2012 or maybe earlier (Gartner report). This clearly hints at the impact smart phones can have on marketing. According to Adology’s survey 35.9% of small businesses surveyed plan to use mobile advertising in 2011, vs. 21.3% in 2010.
Free online services
With information becoming easily available over the internet, most web users are happy to get stuff they want, free of cost. This is can work either ways for an online business, they could lose customers if someone else is offering similar services free of cost or they could gain by first offering basic services free of cost and make the customers stick to them for later up-selling.
Businesses are of course focused more on popular search engines but it’s time to shift the focus equally on local search engines. Local search engines can get you faster and some real good business, which most businesses seldom anticipate, as they are more worried about the global online markets.
Instant support and sale
Competition is all around; you are now a global producer vying for global consumers. Customers are showered with choices, and the trend will be to make the best of it when the customer visits us. So the focus will be on instant support, information and sale, in a single conversation.
Related articles
- Ten ways small businesses attract new talent (theglobeandmail.com)
- Small Business News: Movements in Marketing (businessinsider.com)
- E-marketing ‘has benefits for small business insurance customers’ (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
- One-Third of Small Businesses “Couldn’t Survive” Without Mobile Apps [REPORT] (mashable.com)
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