Converge Weekly

Another year has sailed away and here we are feeling the freshness of 2010 and ready to face its challenges. Yet another ordeal for marketers to build up the best marketing strategies, in order to give this year an excellent start.

For small businesses the focus is on adopting the most economical and effective marketing policies. It is difficult for brands to overlook the web when making such plans. The mantra for 2010 marketing is to use off-line campaigns in conjunction with web-based marketing.

Here are few of the expected trends in web-based marketing for helping the early bird catch the worm:

Trend: Blending offline and online campaigns

Web properties will be optimized due to the demand of users for more content-specific search. Special effort needs to be made to promote the content, including the building of blogs, social media marketing, search engine optimization and email. These web properties will be utilized within an overall campaign that include offline media as well (e.g. snail mail, profiles, print advertisements, TV, radio etc.).

Advantage: The main advantage is cost effectiveness that can be achieved by moving more campaigns online from offline.

Strategy to be adopted: For consumer brands the strategy should be of developing strong relationships with the consumers by bringing the communication to a personal level. As a marketer you should continue to integrate social media with email marketing to ensure that brands, projects and products are cross-marketed to its maximum.

Trend: Mobile Web Marketing

Thirty-eight percent of the youth say that cell phones have become more important to them than their wallet. It is predicted that by 2014 nearly 20 billion mobile applications will be downloaded yearly. Cell phone penetration in Australia has outdone cable TV, web access and home PCs. The mobile web market’s cocoon is turning into a butterfly now.

Advantage: Mobile web market allows direct access to the youth as well as corporate personnel.

Strategy to be adopted: Investing in mobile marketing will not be a waste. For small businesses and start-ups it has to be an essential ingredient in their marketing strategy.

Trend: Video Marketing

Adding videos to a website increases traffic and time-on-site. According to a survey by Internut Marketing, more than 71% of the Australian internet audience view online videos. Video blogs especially attracts visitors.

Advantage: Studies show people like videos if they are relevant and useful. Besides, countless buying emotions and memorable brand moments are possible through videos only. Online video is interactive, unforgettable, commonly accessible, inexpensive to create and vastly shareable.

Strategy to be adopted: If your website does not have any videos yet, add them this year, but be sure that they are appropriate and purposeful to your target audience. Interactive video technology will also be gaining hype this year, so do work on adopting them. For starters, consider creating your own YouTube channel to get a knack of how things work.

Source: Ozcar Guide