Allocating your small business marketing budget to maximize return on investment and minimize the risks of a low or negative return can become a lot more unpredictable when your investments involve trends and emerging technologies. Investing in trends requires smart timing and consumer analysis. Since your trend-marketing returns are only as good as your ability to make educated guesses, here's some advice to help you avoid turning educated guesses into marketing messes. The following list features the top 10 Internet marketing trends for 2010 More
Taking a Centralized Approach to E-mail Marketing
from Chief Marketer
Companies rely on e-mail for a variety of customer communication functions ranging from marketing to transactional and customer service. But these messages are often sent without any knowledge of each other, much less coordination. That's because the various departments in charge of customer service, marketing, promotions, sales and e-commerce have historically been responsible for managing their own e-mail messaging solutions. Many companies are finding, however, that this siloed approach is inefficient and costly, not to mention potentially confusing for customers. More
Check Out Your Checkout
from Entrepreneur
Preston Wily couldn't understand why nearly half of his customers were abandoning their shopping carts at sewelldirect.com, his Orem, Utah-based online retailer of computer and electronic equipment. The partner and president of the company suspected the problem was with the shipping and billing information page, where nearly 23 percent of shoppers left their carts. A couple of simple fixes, including letting customers check out without a password and withholding a request to send them a newsletter until after the transaction had been made, cut abandon rates to less than 20 percent. More
Using Social Media Strategically
from eMarketer
As marketers become more comfortable and more experienced using social media, they move from the trial phase of their marketing efforts toward strategic use of the channel. While the largest group of marketers is still somewhere in between, according to the "2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report" from MarketingSherpa, about one-quarter of social media marketers have made it to the strategic phase of their efforts. More
Resolutions for Your Search Team
from Search Engine Watch
It's a few days into 2010. By now most of us have made some kind of resolutions for the new year, some personal, some career focused, while a few of those resolutions have already been broken. For those with a lot moving parts in search, here are a couple of resolutions you should add to your list -- especially if your list of resolutions has, shall we say, already had some space open up. More
Is 2010 Your Year for a Mobile App?
from ClickZ
As we embark on a new year, it behooves us to remember the old one and take from it whatever lessons we can. Increased consumer usage of mobile devices has resulted in increased usage of the applications made available for them. As a digital marketer, you can approach this information in one of two ways. You can take the "glass half full" approach and view these conditions as ideal for throwing your own hat into the ring. Create your own branded app and take your rightful piece of the consumer usage pie. Alternatively, you can see this as an already oversaturated market that's about to get even more cluttered. You can take the stance that everything that's worth doing has already been done, and ask yourself what you could possibly have to offer on behalf of your brand.More
Three Best Ways to Use Social Media
from The Wall Street Journal
How else can we say it: Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as tools to promote your services and products online. According to a recent survey of 148 private companies, 43 percent say social media is "very important" to their business and marketing strategy, 52 percent are tweeting and 45 percent are blogging. If you've decided to incorporate social media, remember that YouTube videos, blog posts and status updates are just a part of your entire marketing arsenal. Here are three best ways to use social media. More
Analyst: Online Display Ads Set to Surge
from MediaWeek
The stagnant display advertising space should bounce back in 2010, but it will be up to Web publishers to undertake take more drastic measures to increase the value of their ad space, including reducing inventory and eschewing ad networks. That's according to leading industry analyst Imran Khan of J.P. Morgan, who on Jan. 4 released his annual report, Nothing but Net 2010 Internet Sector Outlook. Khan predicts that display spending will surge by 10.5 percent this year after a 5 percent dip last year, with display CPMs rising by 5 percent. More
When TV and the Internet Converge
from ClickZ
So 2009 was the year of social media and there's no reason to suspect that interest in social networks will slow down anytime soon. But what will be the next big thing that changes the way we, as consumers, consume media and how will marketers leverage that consumption? The author's prediction: the convergence of Web-based content, targeting, and functionality with cable television. Call it enhanced TV or interactive TV. More
