6 Big Ideas for 2008 - By Kate Kirby, Copywriter
January 15, 2008
With the expected upsurge in interactive marketing—Forrester Research predicts spending to triple over the next five years, hitting $61 billion by 2012—many marketers are scratching their heads and asking, what’s the best investment for my company this year?
Now is an ideal time to take a look at the innovations, improvements and opportunities we’re starting to see today. So we’ve researched and compiled our list of the 6 “big ideas” to watch—and take advantage of—in 2008.
Search Surge
Search is old news, you say? Yes and no. It’s still charging along, but evolving fast and extending into other formats, such as social, local, and mobile search. As consumers are becoming more comfortable using their devices, mobile marketing will grow in its reach. Local advertising is becoming increasingly robust through search engine targeting options, giving advertisers even greater control over the audience segments they reach.
Behavioral Targeting
While capitalizing on these search trends, you can simultaneously seize the opportunities that lie in behavioral targeting. It is becoming more widespread and will provide improved experiences, delivering more relevant products and information to consumers—and more minutely targeted audiences to marketers. Behavioral targeting will extend beyond current uses for media and social networking sites, helping other online marketers improve and customize their customer experience.
Video Victory
What better way to engage these behaviorally targeted consumers than video ads? Choices for video ad placements are continuing to proliferate, and ads are being served with more sophisticated technologies to measure with considerable granularity the performance of ads.
What’s more, smart advertisers know that people are willing to be advertised to—as long as it’s worth their while. Just look at all the ads found on YouTube. Even if an advertisement starts elsewhere (print, TV, etc.), it can push viewers to engage with a longer more involved story online, where they’re spending more of their time anyway. This year, increasing numbers of consumers in most age groups are going to become more comfortable with online video entertainment—and the advertising associated with it.
Social Networks and Brand
While last year’s big story was the wild success of social networking to the masses, this year’s trend is one that will bring a smile to many advertisers’ faces: niches for social networks, which will create excellent targeting opportunities.
Interest-based social networking sites are expected to proliferate, letting advertisers not only target their message to their ideal audiences, but also to engage with them at a brand level. This will help advertisers and consumers enjoy a true two-way relationship that successful brands have made their focus.
Analytics Advancements
All these trends are well and good for your 2008 online marketing, but it’s for naught if you don’t pay particular attention to performance. Improvements in analytics will enable advertisers to determine the degree of success and measure buzz. This will reveal past performance as well as areas of current and future opportunity.
Your metrics should include the usual suspects: customers, revenues, expenses, and margins—as well as attention to external events and influences. Part of these “external events” are online and press buzz. With the influences that blogs have these days on consumers, companies can’t afford to ignore what’s being said about them online. Improvements in analytics will let you track how what is said influences sales.
Email Evolution
In 2008 email is expected to evolve with more focus on trigger emails, dynamic content and personalization. Customers have grown weary of random promo emails clogging their inboxes. Now email marketers are paying closer attention to customers’ behavioral cues, sending a message based on a specific customer action, to ensure relevant and timely information. Enabling users to customize their content through dynamic newsletters will support open and click-through rates, as well as maintain brand trust.
Starting this year, interactive marketing is expected to jump from its current level—eight percent of total advertising spend—to 18 percent of the budget in the next five years. This means that the interactive marketplace will be full of advertisers jockeying for consumers’ online attention. However, by capitalizing on these trends this year, you will be in the best position to capture the audience attention you seek.