Interactive marketing trends 2010

We are almost at the end of 2009, so time to look at the coming year and formulate some of the movements we see coming ahead:

Neuromarkting

Or how your target audience is using, reacting on what you as a company is sending/offering them. This can be websites, email marketing, mobile marketing etc. Neuromarketing is investigating how your target audience will receive your publicity or how they will use your website. This is not just based on click behaviour or pure metrics, but how the human brain is working.

A lot of the reasons why a campaign will not work can be solved upfront and by using neuromarketing, you get scientific prove why it will not work. So why spending thousands and thousands of campaigns or websites where you discover after launching it, that it doesn't work. You can get a clear indication upfront by using neuromarketing.

E-mail marketing more alive than ever

"Social marketing will kill email marketing". Another media that would kill email marketing and what do we notice, it's more alive than ever before. Social marketing is even using email marketing as a mean of validation and when we speak about sharing content, than 46% of all people share content on social platform by using... e-mail (study of SHARE THIS, which options are used most). So e-mail marketing will become more and more popular, but hopefully agencies will improve their knowledge about the medium. Still lots of badly constructed emails are being send around, please start using actively tools like litmus!

Infobesitas

People are overloaded by information and advertising, where in daily live we are attacked on average of 4000 commercial messages is this also reaching enormous peaks in the digital world. Advertisers and websites are still thinking is mass media and CPM, so people will start to decrease their media consumption and being more focused, we already saw a downturn trend in Twitter and Facebook this year, so next year will be the year to getting it relevant, including advertising.

So no smoking breaks with information breaks.

Behaviour marketing

Yes people are fed up with your nonsense advertising, so stop with blasting away your advertising to everybody and start thinking in real target groups. No more groups like 25/45 year old, but target groups like 25-30, having a car, using green products and swimming every week. Relevancy will bring you success and a high brand value and as consumers are more and more looking into great experiences, your brand value will become more and more important.

The i community

Where a few years ago we moved from large group marketing to a smaller group marketing and that you had to belong to a group to succeed, you clearly see a move to the "i".

"I can make it, if I take care of myself."

Which means that having relevant messages to the individual will become very important. But as an i member, I only believe other i's and I certainly don't believe anymore companies, so having a public product review section on your website, with reviews of real "i's", will be key to success

Integration is key

For years we push companies to integrate their models, but since the rise of social marketing, this will become more and more important. As an "i" consumer, I don't want to be treated impersonal and to be able to give to your consumers a 100% relevant and personal experience will only happen if you integrate all your processes, any break into the chain will have a negative effect onto your brand image.

Search becoming personal and predictive

Giving people search results that will be based on the knowledge of other consumers. Sounds familiar, but until now it was pretty basic, but as technologies evolve, the semantic web will become reality in 2010 and probably mainstream in 2011.

Big brands feeling the heat

Several big brands will feel the heat of smaller brands who are putting the consumer central in their organisation. Combined with a green or sustainable touch,they can make a clear difference. Their challenge will be to find cheap and easy accessible digital tools, so that they don't only exist in the traditional world, but also in the digital and interactive world.

The specialist butcher on the corner defeating the Tesco outside the city...

Green technology going mainstream

One of the splendid examples I saw recently of green technology going mainstream are benches to power up your cellphone. Mixing products that can be useful and save energy will see more and more the daylight, so watch out for backpacks with solar panels, laptops auto charging themselves etc. And thanks to our creative geniuses, those will come in funky colours and designs.

Twitter, finally a business reason

Finally, yes... until now it stayed a real success for the happy few and most of the time technology industry examples. But because of the contract with Google and the integration of the tweets in google next year, this becomes a very cheap alternative to mass media. But keep it relevant, so be very clear why people would need to subscribe to your feed and as email marketing, schedule it!

The biggest hoax in 2010:
Social email marketing

People will realise it's an empty vessel as an expression, you have email marketing and social marketing and both have their trends. And an email does not make it social by adding add this or share this tools. You need more than just using the "social tools". Social marketing is about putting your target audience central in your organisation. The birth of the "chief customer officer"