2011 trends for digital marketing, social media, mobile marketing and the internet

Small companies & social media

Small companies will start finding the way to social media. Social networks allow small companies to connect on a very cost effective way to their target audience. As their organisations are most of the time build upon trust, the match with websites like Facebook or Linkedin is far more tighter than large companies.

It also allow them to advertise on a very cost effective way, having the possibility to go further than the city or country borders. One danger can be that the CEOs of those companies belong to an age range that is very afraid of social media. My advice would be to go beyond the fear and embrace it and while doing it, you can conquer and beat your biggest competitors.

Socialnomics

Social media is her for the staying, the critics that think we are at the end of the social media revolution will have to rethink it in 2011. Social media is just tip of the iceberg. The 1000+ platforms allow consumers and business people to share their content in a very easy way and they will love it even more in 2011. Companies that aren’t on social media platforms will feel the heat by the end of 2011 and will have to start up emergency projects to close the gap. Investments in social media will at least double in 2011 and I feel we are still at the beginning of the storm… Sharing your thoughts and experiences will become extremely hot in 2011 and beyond.

The war of the screens

 Research discovered already that people are doing more than just watching TV. We are multi-tasking as we have less time, so we feel as we need to fill the time we have with as much actions as possible. Watching multiple TV shows at the same time but on different screens will become a habit. Screens are leading the mobile revolution and will amaze us further in 2011. Samsung is the first to show us the next generation of screens on CES and that’s just the beginning. Screens as we knew it will get a hit in 2011, but people are used to watch stuff on a “screen” so a change in habit will not happen in a year. The disappearance of the screen as we know it (the x inch television screen to name one) will start next year… Why would you need a screen to view things? You can have a wall – to- wall screen by using special paint or projection. 3D will become “old fashioned” and this due to the film industry. They just threw too much crappy 3D movies to us that they blew their own revolution. But their will be probably be a revival within a couple of years.

Mobile & tablets

People show us presentations that mobile was a trend the past 10 years and each year we predict it will be a trend again. Well I don’t predict it as a trend, with a European mobile penetration of above 100%, we can say it’s already far beyond the fact of being a trend. What we will be seeing is an explosion in the use of mobile devices. 2009 and 2010 marked the change of desktop PCs to laptop PCs. More mobile PCs were sold than desktops. 2011 will be marked as a differentiation in types of mobile devices. Tablets to name one. Will the iPad be the most sold tablet in 2011. I don’t think so, other players will surpass the iPad and make it more than just a good looking gadget. This will also mark the beginning of the launch of even more gadgets for tablets like a virtual keyboard, or a mind controlled mouse. Both things already exist but could be commoditised in 2011.
Within a mobile strategy, SMS will become extremely hot in 2011. It’s a very cost effective way of communicating with your audience, who have their mobile switched on. Start builing up that mobile phone db!

The green wonder

Greenomics or the green economy will become bigger and bigger. People are aware that our environment is not here for the staying if we continue to waste it at the current speed. But green economy companies need to go beyond the technical or alternative side. Explain to consumers what it is about. Green can be sexy and people are willingly to pay for a high quality product. But you will need to give  more than the cheap wastefully alternative. Here social media can play again a role. The social pressure people feel can help in getting statements across and your products promoted. Some examples that could benefit from a social network penetration would be anything to deal with clothing or accessories. But even solar panels, explain to your consumers how they can use your services and we still need to commoditise the products, In most European countries, you cannot yet buy your solar panels in DIY shops… start thinking market and one of the Ps in marketing “Place”.

The one to stay: email marketing

Email marketing will become even more important than the past 5 years together. While social media is becoming more popular, it’s a different way of connecting to your audience. Segmentation (real-  time/history based and the combination of the two) and integration will become key. If your email database isn’t yet connected to your booking engine or data waharehouse, than don’t even start with social media. Segmented email marketing is step 1 before you even think of starting with social media. So ask yourself this question: what I send out by email, is that adapted fully to my audience?

The agency debacle

Larger advertising agencies and creative agencies have served companies in the past on the most wide range of channels. But with the introduction of social media, it has become christal clear that they cannot be specialist in all domains. Start questioning the quality of service you get and start asking it to your target audience, how do they feel about your advertising? Are you only getting the easy channels like banner campaigns or is your agency going further? We already see a shift towards specialist agencies and this will become even more in 2011. The days we could satisfy ourselves with just running an offline radio & TV campaign combined with a banner campaign on the largest networks was finished a long time ago, now companies need to start realising they have to go beyond the traditional mass campaigns.

Conversion of the masses

Many e-commerce platforms have conversion rates lower than 1%. You could start asking yourself the question if you have to be satisfied with this percentage, while retail stores have 4 times higher conversion rates. People could argue that’s due to the specifications of a digital media, but I don’t believe that excuse. We need to start focussing on how we can convert our visitors into buyers.  Last year, only 1/3 of all e-commerce websites had a abandon cart campaign, re-introducing buyers into the buying cycle. This explains why your conversion rates are so low. You just don’t care about the people spending time with your online store. Start thinking in 2011 in terms of being close to your audience and start serving them what they want & need.

Off the shelf

I always say, technology exists. Cloud computing allows us to pick & chose our software without having to make large investments. A lot of IT teams still think you need months of integration projects to get a software up and running. Well, if you can’t do it in days, start thinking about re-engineering your internal people as they aren’t up to speed with what happens outside your company. Having to integrate a web service is a matter of days, not weeks! Companies able to grasp the new way of implementing new software will gain tremendous terrain.

Tools on a diet

The past year, a lot of companies created heavy bandwidth applications because it is really easy to create apps for mobile devices. Most marketers forgot one crucial fact, nl. To question if an app is the right way forward. Most of them also forgot to convert first their web presence to a mobile presence. We will see a lot of websites being converted in 2011 into a mobile friendly version, with slimmer designs and less graphic heavy structures. Marketers should question themselves, if your target audience never  got a good mobile presence from you, why would they than suddenly use your apps?

The end of websites as we know it

Within 3 years, websites as we know it will disappear. More and more companies will use their facebook/blog presence as their main platform for their target audience. Why would you need a website, if it’s static, consuming your earned money in maintenance and not at all connected to your target audience. As a small company, I would rather want to have my facebook fanpage connected to my domain name, than a website. We’ll see more and more companies going away from the traditional “website”.

Comments

[Brad Fallon]

Hans, you seem to know what will happen in the coming days. Nice one.
One more thing, do you happen to know if the "Caps Lock" key on our keyboard be removed?

[Brad Fallon]

Hans, you seem to know what will happen in the coming days. Nice one.
One more thing, do you happen to know if the "Caps Lock" key on our keyboard be removed?

[mobile media]

Hans, this is a lot more specific than most generic mobile media predictions for this year and beyond so I commend you on that. I fully expect the SME companies brands and businesses to play catch up in terms of social media, but will still fall behind in terms of the communication, interaction and engagement of the followers, which is quite ironic considering that's one distinct advantage of SMEs in acquiring that personal touch. On the whole I would say most of these trends are already present, but this is a very useful assessment and prediction of the future of mobile media.

[Interactive agency Dallas]

Wow-- love this page! It's a wonderful leap forward. This is a newly formed group with great potential to grow

[Salvatiry Carlino]

Other than the iPad, there are other tablets in the market today. It's going to solidify the fact that the mobile market is taking over. With mobile technology today being able to deliver the same functionality as those of desktop PCs, it's not far before we see the number of mobile computers increase.

By the way, Brad. Your question made me think a bit there. Hmm... We'll be needing to get used to the shift button, I guess?

[Web video production]

I personally think that having as many different hubs of yourself spread all over the net in as much content as possible is how to get through to the most people - if you have your social media sites linking to your main page being as a sort of 'for more information' site - the difference is you can employ your own rules on your own site... good post anyhow!

[Keith]

Well the year is nearly over. Are your trend predictions correct? I certainly think Twitter is not going away, but I'm not sure if it will replace websites altogether. I need to take my laptop with me, everywhere.