2010 Marketing Predictions Highlights

This is such an imaginative time to be a marketer and especially a digital marketer. As busy as we know the next few weeks will be for most, here's hoping that you can find some time to follow the links below to some outstanding content that collectively aims to describe what marketers will be working on in 2010.

We're counting on your liking predictions as much as we do because our next post is devoted to them, too. We’ll be publishing Rock The Boat Marketing's 2010 predictions for digital marketing at asset management companies early next week—subscribe to our RSS feed now or please remember to check back then.

Broad Marketing Trends

11 Smart Marketers Shared Their 2010 Predictions is a MarketingProfs round-up from a motley group of marketers representing agencies, consulting firms and a municipality’s Zoning Board of Appeals.

Examples: One of the ad hoc panelists says that tailored campaign microsites with unique URLs will be abandoned, and social media networks will become destination sites/pages for product launches. Another expects 2010 to be the year when the practice of allowing Sales and Marketing to operate as separate, conflicting silos ends once and for all, due to an urgency to get online and social marketing right. In a statement that a few commenters push back on, a third predicts "2010 will be the year that 'true' mobile marketing takes off."

Social media silliness will give way to private social networks. Video will become increasingly important for selling higher ticket items that require repeated exposure and graduated commitment to complete the sale. As video becomes commonplace it will make sense to develop content creation processes that simultaneously lay down all three types of media (video, audio and text). Those are among the 5 Bold Marketing Predictions from direct marketing consultant Clayton Makepeace’s The Total Package Web site.

Email And Contact Strategy

In keeping with the season, there’s an evergreen quality to a few of the email predictions on EmailInsider (e.g., opt-in processes will become friendlier and landing pages will convert better). But writer Chad White’s comments on how ISPs evaluate engagement metrics when making deliverability decisions and the expected heightened use of email preference centers are worth your attention.

Let’s include a few forecasts in this post on predictions. Almost half (48%) of businesses are increasing overall marketing budgets next year, according to a StrongMail survey reported on this Research Brief on Mediapost.com. Email and social media are two channels that offer high ROI, StrongMail notes.

Most Important Email Marketing Initiatives in 2010

Initiative

% Ranking Among Top 3

Improving campaign performance

59%

Improving segmentation and targeting

 46%

Growing opt-in list

 44%

Integrating with social media marketing

42%

Re-engaging inactive subscribers

28%

Improving deliverability

26%

Accessing data to increase relevance

21%

Integrating into transactional emails

20%

Integrating with mobile marketing

19%

Reducing costs

19%

Centralizing on a single platform

11%

Source: 2010 Marketing Trends Survey, StrongMail

Marketing Automation and B2B Marketing Predictions for 2010 were written by Eloqua's Steven Woods, whose book Digital Body Language we’ve recently read and highly recommend. Now that companies can learn so much from customer and prospect behavior online, expectations of physical meetings are being reset, Woods says.

"In 2010, in sales organizations we will see a rapid recognition of the new reality that buyers are less willing to take an initial call from a vendor salesperson with an assumption of only exchanging basic information,” says Woods. A more productive first meeting should be the benefit of getting to know a prospect's online profile.

Brand

“A brand can’t just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement,” writes Brand Keys’ Robert Passikoff in his top 10 brand and marketing trends for 2010 on PizzaMarketplace.com.

Oh and also, according to Passikoff, “Consumers are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit."

Online Creative

8 Experts’ Predictions for 2010 gathered by iMedia Connection provide creative agencies’ views of what will work next year. Experts from Razorfish, Mediasmith and others say that “Want better marketing? Create a better product” will be a relevant theme, and better products will determine the brands likely to succeed. As for agency work, effective execution of ideas won’t cut it—“agencies need to help clients build brands that do something” as opposed to just helping them formulate effective messages.

Social Media

If 10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010 is your first exposure to Mashable.com, the exceptional social media blog, make it a two-fer. Read founder Pete Cashmore’s survey of what’s going on and what’s coming and then find time to browse Mashable. The demand for real-time information, location-sharing and the “voluntary erosion of privacy” are among the trends Cashmore names.

The Church of the Customer offers a too-short Out/In list. Blogger Jackie Huba's thesis is that social media will get boring in 2010 as businesses seek to integrate social media into business functions. That means policy-writing, and business goal and team alignment.

When you think about it, why do we have to go to a separate site just to search? One of the 5 Social Media Predictions for 2010 on this Social Media Today list expects Search to be phased out as a separate function next year—“users will receive meaningful, personally relevant search results within the context of whatever they are currently doing.”

See you back here next week for Rock The Boat Marketing's 2010 marketing predictions for asset manager digital marketers.