It’s important every once in a while to stop and take stock of where you are, and what’s coming over the horizon. Here is a rundown of some of the trends we see building up momentum, and which we feel warrant keeping an eye on. Some of these trends are already over the horizon, and are on the cusp of becoming mainstream.
Social Media Marketing
The day is coming when content is no longer King. One day very soon, content will be the King’s joker. The 800 pound gorilla coming over the horizon is called “people”.
Look at the unbelievable success of the “Subservient Chicken” from Burger King. It’s a little cheesy, a little gimmicky… but it works. Why? Because people thought it was interesting enough to share with their friends. “But the content is why the people shared the page!” we hear you say. Yes, but the content was the catalyst, not the point. The content itself didn’t spread the message - it had nothing to do with fast food, didn’t ask people to buy anything, and barely even mentioned Burger King.
As Marshal McLuhan said, The Medium is the Message - in this case, the medium being all the people who spread the message.
That’s right… the individual is now a platform.
Look for several new strategies to emerge in the near future that emphasize social media marketing. Also watch for a range of “social media experts” to crop up offering “proven” services (that’s not to say that there aren’t social media experts - just that they are currently few and far between, and nothing is really proven reliably effective just yet).
Video Marketing
Okay, Google bought YouTube. And they probably didn’t spend $1.6B without meaning to eventually recoup some of their investment. So keep an eye out for how this is going to be offered to marketers.
Consumer Oriented
Smart businesses are moving away from sales-centric orientation to customer-centric orientation. It’s not going to be about businesses selling things to consumers. Instead it will be about consumers purchasing things from businesses. Business communcations are moving forward from the “we need to sell this, buy it now” to a more consumer oriented “I need this, can you sell it to me”.
Remember all those people who are spreading the message? Well, you can’t control what they’re saying, and if you try, it has the potential to seriously backfire. No-one likes being told what to say. It’s a much better idea to treat people like real human beings, and respond to them with a real human being of your own. The days of being able to say “our product works” over and over until people become loyal customers is over, unless the product actually does work. It is very easy for people to find and express dissenting opinons of your product.
More Diverse Campaigns
Savvy businesses already include a diversified platform from which to launch their message. With search results (especially organic search) becoming increasingly fragmented, a wider view may have to be taken for ambitious organizations. Gone are the days when you could rank well for “cell phone” and be seen by your entire target market around the world. Nowadays it is quite common to see an extraordinary variety of search results from person to person, and place to place.
Your financial advisor probably tells you that you need to diversify your investment portfolio. They probably advise you to not depend too heavily on one industry, or worse, one company. This is good advice for life in general, and there’s even a saying - “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
A healthy marketing mix should currently include at least 2 avenues - probably SEO and PPC. In future, watch for a trend toward growing this diversity to several promotional avenues.
Less Content Advertising
Marketers are usually willing to take chances, but not many are willing to put up with low returns for long. It is generally held that content ads are not as effective as other promotional vehicles, such as search ads. I have seen many experienced online marketers turn off content ads as they set up their campaigns. If content ads continue to show low CTR and conversions, eventually, the number of people willing to pay for them will decrease.
More User Profiling
Which brings us to user profiling, sometimes known as behavioral ads. Content advertising is a basic form of user profiling. You know that the user has (probably) decided to visit this page about, well, whatever it’s about. You are therefore able to show them an ad that you hope is relevant to their current frame of mind. But really, this is kind of like aiming at a target with a blindfold on and knowing that the target is somewhere to your left.
Online companies are getting to know their customers better. Savvy businesses know that when a person buys product A, they have a 50% greater chance of buying product B. They know that someone who arrives at their site searching for “shoes” are probably looking to buy shoes, and not teddy bears. But there is still room for a lot more finesse.
Think of what the search engines are learning about their users. Their searches, what they click on, how long they spend on the page, where they go next, what they say in their blog, what’s on their home page (personalized home pages), when their children’s birthdays are (calendars), where they go (maps), what their credit card numbers are (checkout), what their financial situations are (spreadsheets), what they talk about privately (email), and perhaps even their current medical condition (search). How long can any company resist the temptation to monetize this information?
ClickZ recently reported a new study which found that behaviorally targeted ads can generate better results if they are shown out of context. That is, if you know a person is interested in golf, the best place to show them a golf ad may be on a cooking or other unrelated site. When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. If you’re already on a golf page, your desire to investigate the subject may already have been met. If you are on an unrelated page, you may be tempted to pursue your alternate interest in golf.
Watch for future marketing innovations and avenues that use behavioral ads to increase conversions and ad spend efficiency.
More CPA Promotion
Tired of watching click fraud pad your marketing budgets? You are not alone. Watch for an increase in CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost per Acquisition) models.
After months of speculation, hints, and light-handed buzz building, Google may finally be getting close to launching it’s CPA program. This could be interesting, so we’ll keep an eye on it.
The Death of Links
And perhaps, finally, we can get PageRank to lie down and realize it’s been dead for years. Historically, any time the SEO community says “Ah! That’s the secret!”, you can almost hear the bells tolling the end of that strategy. Google appears (at least) to be quite dependent on links to rank pages. They have even gone so far as to introduce the “nofollow” tag in what seems like a desperate attempt to allow links to sites without sullying the innocence of the link voting system. To combat link spam, the only thing left to do is to depreciate the link as a voting mechanism. Google, anyway, probably doesn’t really need to count links, anyway, with their toolbar and analytics information - they already know which sites are most popular and how long people spend on them. Speaking as a former developer - if I were Google I’d use the toolbar information.
Pay per Mention Blog Posts
These services are already in existance right now, and you can purchase your first blog post today. But be careful - where there’s an easy profit to be made and little in the way of a relationship with the advertiser, there are people willing to take advantage of it without any thought for where the money comes from.