4 Internet Marketing Trends For 2011

information highway

As we’re approaching the end of the 2010 there are numerous developments with businesses using social media. I had predicted that brands will need to figure out how social fits into their overall brand strategy by identifying where the leverage is with social media and how to manage it.

Online communities are now everywhere there is access and common objectives. Even social networks are interconnected themselves pushing and pulling content across various channels.

For business owners, bloggers and marketers, we have to realize that the landscape is changing and will continue to shift towards attentive reach, not frequency.

Instead of trying to reach broad targets of demographic groups, investing in paid media we find valuable organic content becoming more powerful, ranking higher by search engines and shared by passionate communities.

Need more facts to back up the growth of social media? According to Harris Interactive:

9 out of 10 (87%) online adults use social media
Highest percentage (22%) uses social media less than 1 hour per week
Highest percentage of 18-34 yr-olds (17%) uses social media 6-10 hours per week

social media usage study by Harris

It’s indicative that the evolution of social media is not just with the tools. The real “leading indicators” will be how social media gets utilized in the real world, not how marketers want it to be used.

And because we’re living in an over-communicated society with competing and conflicting information, true engagement in this on-demand world will be the biggest challenge moving forward.

I’m not just talking about getting people’s attention in marketing; I’m referring to real meaningful conversations that open up the communication channel that leads to authentic actions.

There is so much noise and deception across all media channels that it only makes sense for most people to ignore them.

Here are 4 internet marketing trends that will be maturing in the coming year:

1) The Return of Direct Marketing

The meaning of your communication is the responses you get especially on the social web where people can simply close a window, ignore a tweet or click away to other attention grabbing links.

Everyone’s got a blog, a website, Facebook page, Twitter account or Youtube Channel. So how do you stand out in a sea of sameness?

As it turns out direct response marketing is still the most effective way to test your marketing campaigns. The difference with social media is that you need to be measuring the right metrics.

It’s essentially the same concept as great salesmanship. Great marketing is great one on one sales focusing on finding out what customers want, their pain, urgency, desire and needs.

Done right you will get insights about your customers that tells you not just what they clicked on but from where, why and how. Remember, greater marketers don’t make assumptions!

Once you have meaningful data, it’s easier to craft your direct response campaign that converts better because you’ll have a list of “high quality” leads that are more likely to buy.

Without qualified leads, you’re basically playing the guessing game, driving in the dark and often a waste of time and money.

Concentrate on appealing and selling to the top 20% of the prospects that are more likely to convert. And if you can integrate your email marketing efforts with social media, you’ll gain further insights on your customer’s media habits, which can be used to optimize your next campaign.

2) The Raise of Social Metrics

Since majority of your prospective customers will not convert immediately upon getting your communication, it’s important to follow-up with email and social media because not only will you know when someone opened the email and what they’ve clicked on; you’ll also learn their social habits and sphere of influence.

The goal is to find out your customer’s “from” and “to” path to your web properties. It could be your online store, a product(s) page, your opt-in page (landing page), a sign-up to webinar or simply a Facebook page.

Ask yourself these questions:

Where are my source of traffic? How much does it cost me? (time, money and resources)
What are the demographics (age, location, habits etc…) of my traffic? Are they on social networks?
What does my customers want? Do I have the same customers online and offline?
How much time does it take for my customers to go from the original source of traffic to my web properties? And what can I do to get them to take the action I want that aligns with what they want?
What social media metrics can bring clarity to the habits of my prospective customers?

There are some nice free tools out there that will provide you with social data to get you started.

One of my favorite way to view my engagement performance is using Hootsuite’s statistics with Google Analytics and email marketing data. This allows me to view the engagement performance across social media from blog articles to emails.

For example, in the past 12 months, I generated 16,000+ clicks from my Twitter account which allows me to see what sort of topic my followers are interested in.

twitter.com/designdamage

I can then tailor my blog content to target further engagement and sharing. The same can be applied to email and this is particularly useful if you have an ecommerce site that allows you to track sales conversions.

The key here is to link metrics to actionable options that you generate for them. That’s why you want people to visit your web properties because you will have control of the environment. Everything is a test in marketing.

3) Focus Shifts from Tactical to Strategic

From the mix of clients and prospects I’ve talked with this year, most of them fall into one of the three buckets: those still experimenting with social marketing, those using social media as an add-on tool with existing marketing tactics and those integrating social as part of their efforts to be more customer-centric.

In the coming year I see more businesses moving towards wanting to be more social embracing what Jeremiah Owyang described as the “hub and spoke” social business model.

The challenge will be how to strategize, streamline, automate, budget, and measure social media and social marketing. Simply put, the one-size-fits-all volume marketing will no longer be effective.

You want more consistent, predictable campaign that can be efficiently replicated instead of one-off campaigns that requires lots of resources and attention to operate.

So how can you achieve that?

The best way is to conduct split testing across integrated campaigns. You must become gradually efficient at implementing and optimizing your campaigns focusing on frequency and delivery of real-time value.

It also requires the big picture marketing strategy, NOT just tactics. At the end it is about getting the highest return on the value you create for your customers. Start thinking about how you can earn engagement that leads to conversation that leads to revenue.

4) Video Marketing Becomes Mainstream

Are you doing any videos? Do you know that a YouTube channel is the equivalent of a Facebook profile? Do you know that online video, yes video can help with your SEO?

Let’s take a look at some data here for you to think about.

At the 2010 Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo, Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR revealed that:

Americans watch more videos a month on YouTube than they conduct searches on Google
A video is 50 times more likely to get a first-page Google ranking than a text page

If those finding aren’t stunning, coming from an SEO perspective check out Pew Internet Research’s recent study indicating that “7 in 10 adult internet users (69%) have used the internet to watch or download video. That represents 52% of all adults in the United States.”

Something to keep in mind is that while online video is exploding, other media channels are slowing down or shrinking!

According to a recent Edison Research’s study indicates that “during an average day, Americans age 12-24 spend two hours and 52 minutes on the internet, making the web the media format American young adults spend the most time consuming. Television closely follows with a daily average of two hours and 47 minutes.”

In addition, as opposed to TV ads, online videos are trackable and can be viewed repeatedly attracting the “long-tail” viewers while allowing you to measure the exact impact of the video and participate around it in the comments section or on blogs.

The bottom line is that although video (Youtube) marketing isn’t anything new, it’s gaining more momentum now because the cost of video production are dramatically reduced today than it was a few years ago.

You can now purchase high definition cameras (such as the Flip HD) for under $150 which creates amazing looking videos. Even the new iPhone4 has HD videos that enable everyone to become a video producer at all times.

Keep in mind that you should consider video marketing tactic to support your overall marketing campaign not the other way around if it doesn’t fit into your strategy. Success video marketing strategy focuses on attracting the right audience with a topic or theme that’s video-worthy and can be compelling!

The take away: We’re in the middle of a media evolution where technology has fundamentally changed the way we consume media and interact with one another. It’s not about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Google, iPhone or iPad; it never has been.

It’s about how these tools and platforms support what you want to achieve with your business.

Social is just a label, the real challenge is figuring out how to deliver optimal customer experience that builds meaningful relationships between you and your customers.

Am I missing anything here? Please leave your comments and questions, I’m interested to hear how you’re using internet to market your business, products or services.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/salesmanship

10 Reasons Why You Are Not Getting The Results You Want Out Of Your Marketing

by Eric Tsai

You spent countless hours crafting your marketing campaign investing money and hiring marketing experts to help guide you through the process. You get ready to push the launch button, waiting for emails and phone calls come pouring in, then…

Nothing happens. But what could go wrong?

You did the things that the marketing “experts” said you should do with your keywords, putting up blog articles day after day, uploading videos and sending out email newsletters.

Why?

Here are 10 reasons why you’re not getting the attention, buzz and most importantly – the sales conversion. Oh, and let’s assume you have an unbelievable product.

Your marketing message is full of “I” and “me” instead of “you.”
You didn’t communicate the “why” (from the “I” perspective)
You didn’t communicate the “what” (again from the “I” perspective)
You didn’t communicate the “how” (need I say more from which perspective?)
You didn’t communicate the “what if” (as in what if “I” was to buy and use the product)
Your marketing talks at people about your own expertise instead of showing them how your solution solves their problem.
You make assumptions about your customers (because you already sold some products before or you just know because you’ve been doing it for 20 years, ok great continue to do that then) instead of focusing on fact gathering (read my last post on listening)
You didn’t do enough testing on your products, services or marketing messages before you launch
You use all your email and social media as a one way push advertising instead of two way conversation (to help you pre-test)
You lack compassion and didn’t empathize with your prospects because you’re too focused on the bottom line – making money

The talk away: Don’t be all things to all people. You’ll have a better opportunity to convert sales (subscription, readership etc.) if you narrow down your target market because you’re a big fish in a small pond so just go after more small ponds! Don’t swim with the sharks in the big ocean because chances are, you’ll become their lunch.

Ask yourself if your marketing message is tangible, external, specific and measurable to your target prospect? And try NOT to use the word “I” or “me” in your message.

Here is one of my all time favorite (and world famous ad) created by the genius David Ogilvy. Notice how many “I” or “me” were used in this ad – none. Focus on the title and you’ll learn how this 1959 ad is still the foundation of today’s direct response marketing.

How To Keep Customers Coming Back: 6 Trends You Should Know

by Eric Tsai

Living in southern California I love going to restaurants, cafes and retails stores to experience what companies are doing to attract customers.

From merchandising to customer service, I’m gradually seeing three popular marketing trends that everyone is doing to spread their brand voice.

First, almost every company is in on the social media bandwagon specifically leveraging Facebook and Twitter to engage with their fans and broadcast their offerings.

Second, companies are finding ways to collect your contact information to build their email list by offering discounts, coupons or customer loyalty programs.

And third, businesses are aware of their reputation online on places such as Yelp, Consumer Reports, OpenTable, BizRate, Amazon and CNET.

Some of using these information as a way to improve products and identify service gaps.

All three marketing tactics are proven to be somewhat cost-effective in terms of managing their reputations online while funneling leads and converting sales.

There is enough free information out there that business owners and marketing managers can find to start immediately so I’m not surprise that everyone is doing it.

In fact, I always check out the Twitter or Facebook page of where I’ve visited to see what level of engagement and following they have as well as to identify how the platform was utilized.

The result I found is that companies fall into two categories of social media marketing buckets.

First are the highly engaged profiles with regular updates and a large following that creates instant social proof. Second are the uninspiring profiles with the lack of updates and little to no interactions.

This is the same observations made by Jeremiah Owyang, who recently posted on his blog that, “many brands are jumping on the social media bandwagon, without giving proper thought about the impacts to their marketing effort. In particular, many brands are putting ’social chicklets’ on their homepage to “Follow us on Twitter” or “Friend us on Facebook” without considering the ramifications.”

This is the problem with low barrier to entry tools such as Twitter and Facebook that many brands are using without a real deliberate strategy.

I encourage those of you that are serious about your digital marketing efforts to use Jeremiah’s matrix to help make your decisions.

Keep in mind, you must understand not just the rules of the game but also how it applies to your specific industry, your customers and your organization.

There is no doubt that the internet has made it easier to find what you’re looking for while connecting you with like-mined individuals from networking to referrals, relevant information is available in abundance.

The questions is where do people get those information and how will these content providers be perceived?

First you need to realize that all of the answers have changed.

Same Questions, Different Answer

Although the internet has forever changed our expectations in media consumption and in communication, one thing remains constant for businesses today: the question of how do we attract more customers to us?

How do we get customers to spread our brand? How do we get customers to buy more and buy often?

As a marketer today you must realize that we’ve been asking those same questions for decades and in order to answer them now you must first understand the following 6 fundamental social change in customer perception and behavior:

1. Choice overload: Customers are bombarded with choices; the market is saturated with selection.

And people get frustrated when they have to make a decision from tens and thousands of product categories, brands and price points.

Everything looks the same, everyone sounded alike and it doesn’t help when people have shorter attention span as we become more distracted everyday.

2. Conflicting information: We’re in a hyper-connected marketplace where people are using social media to discuss new products, do their own research, cross referencing information in the blogosphere and everything goes from frustration to confusion.

There is simply too much information and how can an average consumer know who’s right and who’s wrong?

3. Customers know marketing: Over time, customers understood the game of marketing regardless of B2C or B2B.

Described by Tom Asacker: We’re no longer passive consumers but active discerners participating in how products are marketed at us.

This is why there is an increasing trend in banner blindness and average web users will give you only 8 seconds to decide if they’re going to stay or not.

4. Lack of trust in the marketplace: There is a sense of distrust in the marketplace. People simply don’t trust individuals let alone corporations.

We’re conditioned to identify the tactics such as sense of urgency (buy now and save!), risk reversal (money back guaranteed!), or scarcity thinking (for a limited time!).

Watch any TV infomercials and you’ll find those tactics in most of them.

Simply put, these tactics are losing their effectiveness and even if they worked that led to engagement opportunities, you must meet the customer expectations otherwise it’s hard to fool them twice.

5. People define your brand: Brand messages only sets the initiate expectations of your target audience and ultimately people make meaning out of things themselves.

When push comes to shove, people go with what feels right not your product features or service benefits.

It’s how you make them feel, not what you tell them how they should feel. If they can relate to your message, it only means they’ll give you a few more seconds to keep going down your path to purchase.

Your brand is defined by how you make people feel about the decisions they’ve made not just your messages.

6. The shift towards frugality: This is the simplest concept to grasp as the recession has permanently changed the way consumers behave and perceive value.

It goes beyond pricing strategy and product promotions.

Whether you’re a retailer, a B2B service provider or a marketer, this means extracting deeper customer insights to build meaningful, differentiated messages that communicates relevancy.

This is best described by a recent article “The New Consumer Frugality” in Strategy+Business, by Booz & Company, in which the authors defined six frugal consumer segments.

After a thorough understanding of the above trends, you should also be aware of the fact that brands are becoming publishers creating opportunities that’s leveling the playing field.

And in order to be successful moving forward, you either have great content strategy or you have unique customer experience (in product or service innovation).

Content Marketing Creates Relevancy

Recently Joe Pulizzi of Junta42.com, a content strategy evangelist published a post after speaking at the Online Marketing Summit 2010 on how companies focus solely on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and social media that produce without a real content strategy.

Specifically he noted that “any online marketing, whether social media, email marketing, search engine optimization, landing page conversion, etc., does not work without first having content strategy.”

As a brand strategist that focuses on marketing integration, I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve heard business owners and marketing executives realize the need to change their strategy, but it’s often due to the need to “keep up” with the current trend. “We must get into social media because everyone’s doing it,” or “We need to engage our customers on Facebook and Twitter.”

But what does engagement mean to your organization? How will that benefit your bottom line or increase sales?

It’s easy to setup a WordPress blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook fan page or a LinkedIn Group.

The key is what will you be pushing out to generate meaningful conversations?

How will you provide value that sparks engagement?

Why would people spread your idea or pass on your name?

What’s the call-to-action when people get to your website, your blog, or your social media pages?

Product Innovation Creates Loyalty

The other way to win in the marketplace is to deliver awesome products or services that build brand loyalty via innovation.

An easy example would be what Apple is doing with their continuous innovation in products from iPod to iPhone to last weekend’s release of iPad.

Amazon’s endless pursue to have everything available, fast and easy via their online store regardless what you’re looking for.

Zappo’s unmatched customer service in finding and delivering not just the shoes you ordered but what you may also like.

For restaurants, it’s the food you cater, the service you provide, the price tag you put on as the total experience that says “we’re different.”

Customers will automatically go on to Yelp and OpenTable to give you reviews and recommendations. Your customer will decide what quality is and what value means to them.

I love what James Surowiecki wrote in an excellent piece in The New Yorker: “the more information people have, the tighter the relationship between quality and price: if you can deliver a product or service that is qualitatively better, you can charge top dollar. But if you can’t deliver the quality you can’t get the price.”

You’re going to struggle if you don’t deliver brand experience that’s worth talking about.

Everyone have access to the same tools and resources, if you can deliver a mix bag of value using content marketing strategy on your innovative products, you win.

The take away: Brands must adapt to the new realities that everyone is a content producer and we are no longer competing on eyeballs and clicks only, but value that builds long-lasting relationships in a trust-driven era.

It is essential to establish clear, integrated marketing strategies for various media channels in order to deliver personalized messages that properly aligned with your business objectives.

If you don’t know your desired outcome, why are you implementing tactics where you can’t see what success means to you?

If you don’t have exceptional products perhaps its time you should rethink your product strategy.

Are you re ready to get actionable to integrate your marketing efforts?

3 Brand Marketing Trends That Will Continue

by Eric Tsai

3 brand marketing trends

When you hear something enough times, it may be a fad. But when you start to see email spam about it, you know it’s a trend.

That’s the case with marketing trends such as email marketing and social media.

The problem with trends is that it’s usually a lagging indicator which means to seize the opportunity you may need to be an early adopters to reap the rewards.

If adopting new strategy and implementing fresh tactics sounds too risky, just take a look at the troubled newspaper and magazine companies and you’ll realize what I mean.

Similar to technology innovation, brand strategy is taking on an increasingly strategic role focusing not just on the bottom line but the ability to produce desirable financial outcomes. It’s no surprise that the most innovative brands also fail more frequently, it’s the nature of the tried-and-true culture.

However, it takes discipline, research, analysis and creativity to find the right fit that works for your organization. Whether you’re promoting your personal brand or your corporate brand, here are the 3 brand marketing trends to look for in 2010:

1.Brands Must Become More Social Online

It’s no secret that B2B or B2C customers have been talking about your industry and your brand. Now with social media it’s simply going to be “on the record” somewhere over the internet, searchable and conversable.

If you can deal with customers in person, why couldn’t you deal with them online?

Engagement with your audience creates brand awareness, increase brand loyalty and the opportunity to get feedback that can help to improve your product and services. Social engagement encourages crowdsourcing, use it wisely it can energize both you and your audience.

Provide transparency in what you do and demonstrate authenticity in what you say are the keys to building your online “street cred.” Organizations must look at the bigger picture and realize the emerging trend of social business branding and how it will impact all aspect of the company from internal collaboration to external engagement.

Becoming more social for brands means establishing a collaborative infrastructure within the organization to support the core brand strategy. There is no doubt that consumer wants to engage through social media so if brands don’t get into it, consumers will leave.

Ideas for action: Learn the tools of the trade in social media and (please!) put someone that cares about your brand to the task.

Research and identify where you customers are at talking about you, listen and monitor before you jump in. Analyze the conversation around any product, topics, or category and identify any detractors and advocates to take actions.

More importantly learn to communicate well online, respond on time, be clear and to the point. Provide value when interacting with your audience, focus on helping not selling and always deliver relevant and effective communications.

In addition, make sure you have a policy in place so you have a focused, consistent and cohesive approach in reacting to the situation regardless of which platform you’re using. The bottom line is that social media engagement without governance is a recipe for disaster.

It’s possible that your customers may not be on an open social network but on several discussion boards (forums/BBS), a private professional community, or even a popular blog where comments serve as dialogues. speak to your customers directly to identify where they get their information, use a survey and provide rewards if needed.

Myths to consider: We can’t quantify the ROI (return on investment), so let’s just not measure them. First of all, there are ways to measure all the marketing activities whether they’re meaningful to your organization is another story (yes you want the meaningful ones!).

The important thing is to cultivate accountability in your actions so you get results that can give you the insight to make real informed decisions.

My recommendation is to rank your marketing priorities that are most likely to pay off or generate the impact your want first. If your strategy is to aim for awareness and exposure, then put reach and volume first instead of experience and frequency.

Keep in mind that you need to be able to quantity to a certain degree so you don’t drain your marketing resource and budget.

2.Shift in Value Perception Creates Opportunities for Brands

Generic brands are nothing new especially in the grocery store where the house brands are marketed and sold side by side with the leading brands.

The economy has shifted the perception of value fundamentally into a do-more-with-less and value-for-money mode.

According to the latest IRI Times & Trends Report: Game-Changing Economy Taking Private Label to New Heights, “private label unit share has grown 1.2 points to 22.8% and dollar share has grown 0.7 points to 17.6% across all outlets in the past 12 months.” Simply put, private label brands are gaining momentum across all tiers of product categories from premium tier to value tier because they have the advantage to compete on quality as well as price.

This represents a significant opportunity for less known brands (startups, SMBs, personal brands) to compete for new businesses while leading brands still has their eyes on cutting costs (overheads, infrastructure) and reorganizing operations.

In addition with the explosion of social media, unknown brand can go viral instantly followed by awareness because brands no longer control the buying space or the conversation, it only needs credibility to explode.

Ideas for action: This is the time to take your brand to another level especially with more cost effective tools and technologies, why not take a hard look at your current setup for operations, sales and marketing?

Reallocate your investments and prioritize your marketing, branding or product development strategies.

Many out-of-your-budget marketing avenues have dropped in price dramatically, check your local advertising channels you may be in for a surprise on how cheap it is now to run radio, print and even TV ads.

It’s a good time to build your email marketing campaign, run promotion events or even redo your old website so it’s more social media friendly.

You can even try partnering with someone locally to share the cost or co-brand some offerings together. Another idea is to create a new brand allowing you to expand into other categories or verticals utilizing the resources you already have.

Brand extension can help secure new revenues and reinforce brand strength without compromising your current brand equities.

This is the time to drive appeal and awareness to build recognition. Use today’s digital communication platforms to collect meaningful customer data, conduct surveys and optimize your digital presence via social networks.

Reevaluate your brand strategy, be innovative with your products and services, create a culture that reward your people and update your performance metrics.

Myths to consider: We don’t have the time, money or resources for marketing and nobody is buying!

If you don’t have a plan to convert data to actionable insight, a process to collectively review the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, how do you know what you’re doing works?

If you don’t invest in marketing or advertising, how are you going to differentiate the unique meaning of your brand? Without differentiation you will loose pricing power and competitiveness.

If your brand isn’t even in the run for consideration, how will your customers know that you exist? And people are spending, just selectively in a timely matter. According to the American Express Spending & Saving Tracker, “amid their (consumers) cautiousness we are seeing some areas where people are willing to increase spending.”

There is a shift in how businesses and consumers are expressing their priorities, but that doesn’t mean you should be reactive, in fact I would argue that being proactive now will benefit your ROI in the long haul.

3. Community Building is Now a Priority

Moving forward, brands will have to focus on fostering their own community to own the communication distribution network.

Building a community is about connecting and sharing experiences, I’ve outlined this previously specifically in social networks, which still applies to other platform as well.

The fact is that the adoption of new communication platform (ie. email, radio) has led to a new wave of user experience in which the context (ie. direct mail, website) and the message (ie. ads, PR) must stay relevant.

If the community is trusted by the members, they will extend the trust through word-of-mouth that could mean more opportunities for brands to increase buying frequency using content or conversation marketing tactics.

Keep in mind that you should get involved in the right channel and passively direct customers to your community. Effective engagement can also lead to permission-based marketing. According to a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by ExactTarget, “One-half of consumers said unsolicited messages were unacceptable even from companies they did business with regularly. That was up from about one-quarter in 2008.” When your audience allows you to contact them, you essentially have a direct line to access a targeted customer base.

Ideas for action: For low barrier to entry options, look into building a community using one of these: Facebook fan page, Twitter account, Google group, LinkedIn group, Yahoo groups; or create your own social network (with blog, discussion forums etc.), Ning, KickApps, ThePort, SharePoint, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Posterous, Moveable Type, SocialText, SixApart, and Pringo just to name a few.

If you’re tech or internet savvy, you can use a combination of them but I suggest to focus on becoming versed in 1-2 first then expand to others. Personally, I’m using a combination of a WordPress blog (you’re reading it now) and Twitter (@designdamage).

You can also use video sharing sites like Youtube and Vimeo to help funnel traffic to your community. Another import tip is to leverage RSS feeds to push your message from one-to-many networks.

It’s easy for someone to discover if there’s any participation in your community or not so if you’re going to have a community, you need to be there for your audience.

Dedicate a set amount of time to regularly check the activities in your community, answer questions, drive conversations and connect with members. People have short attention span especially on the internet, so make sure you work on your message (goes to number 1 above) and keep your audience interested.

The goal is to mobilize brand advocates to drive word-of-mouth for greater engagement.

Myths to consider: We’ll just hire an expert and let them do the work like how we outsource web design and SEO.

Although we’re at the age of outsource-anything today and get it done tomorrow, it’s hardly a sustainable long-term strategy especially when it’s about your brand’s core value and mission.

Too often we forget that people are at the center of any holistic effort to improve business performance and accountability.

Outsource to gurus may get things done, but you need to take the time and effort to work with them not to mention they’re hard to find, afford and keep. I’ve clean up some mess for clients before where the outsourced expert created more problems than what they were hired to solve.

This is why so many brands fail to update their websites regularly or refresh their SEO campaigns. Take the time to educate yourself some of the trends will benefit you in the long run, or get your team involve and split the workload across multiple heads.

The takeaway: The evolving marketing and media ecosystem is putting pressure on brands to innovate and evolve, or risk becoming extinct.

These trends will be here to stay and is essential for brands to be successful moving forward.

Have you made the transition yet to accommodate these trends? What are you doing to make the necessary changes to your brand strategy?

I will be reviewing the trends in digital marketing, specifically social business branding next, stay tuned.

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