Commentary
10 Things Changing Marketing In 2010
- by Joe Marchese , December 22, 2009
With 2009 coming to a close, and this being my last post of the year, I figured a list of the hot issues facing marketers in 2010 would make sense. I have written more extensively on most of the subjects over the course of the year, but I'll keep it short here and just provide the most relevant links to past musings. So, in no particular order, here comes 2010:
1. Rise of Mobile - Mobile is going to be huge in 2010, especially if marketers can build digital campaigns with mobile extensions. Digital provides reach, and mobile can provide increased depth of interaction. For more on why 2010 is FINALLY the year of mobile, check out last week's post on "Why Mobile In 2010."
2. Facebook Connect - It's hard to overstate the implications of Facebook Connect for marketers. The ability to create more rewarding experiences for consumers, and simply be more creative, by using Facebook Connect will change all digital marketing efforts -- and, I believe, take "social media" out of its silo. For more on Facebook Connect's implications, check out "The End of Social Media" and "Secret Race For Permission."
advertisement
advertisement
3. Cause Marketing - I don't know what digital rock you've been under if you haven't heard that Pepsi has pulled out of the Super Bowl to focus more on marketing for the social good. The key will be, can Pepsi activate people to spread its message because of the social good they are doing? Social media makes this a very possible outcome with the right programs put in place. Put simply, Pepsi is hoping, as I wrote earlier, that "Corporate Social Responsibility = Profitability."
4. Engagement Pricing - Digital media -- heck, all media -- needs new metrics that do a better job at measuring the value publishers deliver to marketers. These metrics should be harder to "fake" - and should be able to be standardized across media outlets for media buyers and planners. No, engagement won't be the only metric, but I'd put my money (and have) on it being one that stands out in 2010.
5. Social Media Agencies - I know, it's crazy, right? How can I claim the "end of social media" is coming and that social media agencies will take off in 2010? Well, for those who read the entire post, I say what actually will end is considering social media a marketing silo. Instead, the skills that make a marketing firm good at executing "social media campaigns" from concept, to execution, to management, will be the skill set required by ALL digital agencies. Most likely, we will see something like what the marketing industry saw with the growth of search engine marketing: a rise of specialty agencies in the social media space, and the subsequent acquisitions of said agencies by holding companies and larger digital shops to help provide scale.
6. Local - See mobile. If you're working on a national brand, what's your local mobile and digital strategy extension?
7. Brand Dollars Go Digital - It can be argued very easily that we are witnessing a "direct response bubble" in digital marketing. This is because of a near obsession in closing the loop on ROI measurement. More and more marketers are expanding their definitions of digital ROI outside of direct response and looking at how digital can help achieve brand objectives. And as I argued before, it's just a question of scale and efficacy before digital media can compared to more traditional forms of marketing initiatives. See: "$1 Million Social Media Marketing Challenge."
8. Social Media Campaigns Grow Up - Will we stop hearing the word "viral" in 2010? I doubt it, but we can hope to hear it a whole lot less. I think the social media landscape is littered with enough failed viral efforts that most sane marketers and agencies will stop thinking that social media as "free." There is a formula and a science to making social media efforts work. Dedicated resources, measurement of the right things, and adapting to what is learned will make social efforts more stable.
9. Real-Time Search - This is perhaps the most "bleeding edge" of any of the trends/issues facing marketers in 2010, but I do believe it is one that can have a major impact -- and very quickly. The simple fact is that as real-time search improves, so does people's ability to get real-time, unfiltered feedback from peers on products and services. It will be much harder for brands to control or manage their reputation, as with review sites. Instead, brands will need to turn to strategies that encourage positive conversations to balance out the inevitable bad.
10. Whatcha Got? I figured I'd leave the 10th open and hear what you all think. Drop me a line on Twitter at www.twitter.com/joemarchese and/or add your thoughts to the comments on the Spin board below.
Have a great New Year's, everyone! Thanks for reading in 2009, and here's to an exciting 2010!
Great piece....and my vote for #10 is the increasing importance of research, which is now covering everything from shopper insights to multicultural to 360 media and marketing to WOM to Listening and more. Those ad agencies and advertisers without it in their tool kit will be left behind.
Good read, and I appreciat the insights! My #10 would be that with more video content going on the web daily, video advertising will start to exlipse other forms of online advertising. Todd Sacerdoti, CEO and founder or Bright Roll, just wrote a great piece on the topic on December 10, "All Great Internet Companies Will Either Build or Buy a Video Network". Like Todd, I have a vested interest in seeing online video thrive, but all the research I read bears it out. Happy Holidays!
Good insight, but I still feel that before any of these have a meaningful effect on the overall marketing spend or sales numbers a meaningful, de facto standard metric to quantify the marketing concepts above must emerge. Without a useful metric, we may see more cause marketing because its good PR and its cheaper (usually) than buying a Super Bowl ad....but does it have any impact on the bottom line, does social media help brands. Show me the standard metric.
Good stuff here! I would say for #10 that social media is infiltrating and changing online advertising. The goals for online advertisers used to be to crate big flashy ads that captured eyeballs. Now the objectives are shifting and ads are now trying to inspire you to take action, particulary by using social media to spread brand messages to friends and networks.
Also geotargetting is going to get huge in 2010 -- related to your #1 (mobile) and #7 (local). Location is becoming a key data point that maketers can't ignore.
You are right about mobile. And one of the big drivers is going to be MMS...which means marketers will be able to communicate IN VIDEO to consumers regardless of whether they have the smartest smartphone or the dumbest regular phone. No longer will mobile marketers have to sacrifice reach by only interacting with smartphone subscribers. Remember, there are about 150MM "regular" phones out there in the US. MMS means the consumer can receive the video withOUT any reliance on an Internet/data plan. Several brands recognized this in 2009, and of course many others executed text-only campaigns. You can see this in action by texting 'mogreet' to 21534.
This is an excellent post. I also like the comments and some of the Number 10's proposed. Another key trend I see growing strongly in 2010 is emergence of really solid platforms like what TipTop is building to make sense of unstructured data in real time. I won't be surprised if, by the end of next year, we conclude that this is the #1 enabler that makes everything else work really well.
Very interesting post. My recommendation for #10 is adoption of a new marketing model that places social media in the context of integrated marketing, versus putting it in a silo. At Media Logic, we call this Conversation-Centric Marketing. To learn more go to www.mlinc.com.
Joe: Great post. As for #10: I think it's so important to rethink social media as both the center of the conversation, as David from Media Logic points out, and the heart of new insights that we can use to better plan our messaging and better define personas. For too long we've used demographics as a proxy for interest. Even behavioral targeting is still a guess and only delivers to a fraction of the intended audience. Through social media monitoring tools, like Socialscape, we can identify TRUE interest and then build TRUE engagement. Happy Holidays everyone!
I would add the growing importance of "comment" marketing in driving page rank and awareness. As well as A/B testing
Mark
Terrific top ten list. I predict that #10 will be an explosion of user-generated ad content. More and more companies will co-create with customers, raising the relevance of the creative and finding new and personal ways to "narrowcast" it to the most interested prospects.
Legit post. My #10 is local content. It's about time that small businesses got on board and build out their sites and developed better digital marketing strategies. The tools are plentiful and are of the WYSIWYG type. Mostly free too.
The last year of economic woes have dramatically raised the profile of couponing, but, surprisingly, not as much as one might have predicted for mobile coupons. Mobile marketing is still an under-utilized medium, or perhaps just not widely understood, buried under the clutter of all the smart phone hype, and related apps. Mobile marketing, in its simplest form, is extremely competitive, and is being adopted by more businesses than ever. In 2010, as the economy begins to recover, mobile marketing can be a powerful adjunct to any marketing strategy. It's simple, it's affordable, and it WORKS! Economic growth will be driven by the SMB market, and they are the ones best positioned to exploit mobile marketing.
#10 - Marketing analytics based on integrating online and offline data will provide much higher ROI for online targeted advertising.