Everyone does it right? For some, it’s a way to look back and say “I told ya so.” For others it’s all about being far out in left field and stirring up some conversation. For me, other than being a large part of my job it’s a fun exercise to go through with clients and my team.
Social Media Marketing and the Corporation
As a professional online marketer, I’ve spent the better part of the last 5 years designing search marketing programs for very large companies. A major part of the strategy usually revolves around harvesting demand in one form or another and then some serious post click optimization on a landing page or microsite. Lately, as budgets for online marketing begin to shrink a bit companies are obviously looking to get more return out of the dollars being spent and are looking at social media as a serious player in the marketing mix as a low cost alternative. The thought is that earned media is free, and will pay off with great returns. Sounds good, right? Well, what they don’t have is any clue on how to get involved. I’ve seen everything from Facebook fan pages to employees signing up for Twitter and posting completely irrelevant information. Often times it’s probably doing more harm then good for them to even attempt a social media play in the first place. My prediction is that in 2009 we will see many social media failures, some even press worthy, by Fortune 500 companies trying to get in the game. Monetizing social media campaigns is for another post altogether.
The CPM Model will take a huge hit
Impression based spending will drop drastically this year. As with the previous point, lower budgets mean more responsibility on the existing dollars. The CPA model and performance based deals will make a major rise this year. Look out for a resurgence in affiliate websites as companies look to spend for customer acquisition rather than demand generation.
All search efforts, that is organic, paid, and social, will get back to the basics: focus more on post-click activity.
Rather than micromanage front-end variables to drive more click volume, search marketers will put renewed energy into driving visitors to action by creating efficient reporting processes for improving conversion rates and average order value while looking to incorporate lifetime value metrics and cross-channel attribution models.
Yahoo will be broken up and sold off
My guess is Microsoft takes the search side and AOL or News Corp takes the rest of the portal. I’ve got dibs on OMG!
DART Search will be offered for free by Google
This will really change things. With the combination of integrated search trafficking along with Google analytics and AdWords targeting and ease of use, Google search will become a bigger powerhouse and more advertisers will be flocking to the platform for advertising. Expect CPCs to rise (again) and competition to become much more fierce, especially for small and medium business and even more so in local search. On the other hand I think the fact that DART will require companies to show Google all of their data, sales and conversion activity included, will prevent larger companies from using the product.
Facebook will figure out how to make money
My guess is they acquire a payment company or build one themselves. PayPal may be coming up cheap soon, so maybe that’s it. I can see a deep integration with their platform and some shopping engine somewhere. Afterall, they know everything about us, right? How hard will it be to serve us products and services that are completely, or at least 99.99% relevant to our interests.
Mobile search will rise in popularity
The major search engines will see a rise in mobile usage, as will the major social sites. As more devices come out with iPhone-esque ease of use and application platforms, marketers will need to make sure they are ready to meet the demand of mobile usage.
In hindsight, cutting marketing budgets in 2009 will have been a bad idea
This is a big one for me. I think that companies that can figure out a way to put a quality long term content strategy in place in 2009 will be in a great place when the economy comes back up to a decent level. This means that now is the time for evangelism, establishing credibility, delivering proof points, deep-dive Q&A, earning “trusted partner” status - and a blog is a great way to begin to pull that off. Spending to get this off the ground in 2009 will have a great impact on future performance.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
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I would like to see a platform which combines everything people do online. Post messages, photos, videos, blog, email, and shop.
The only thing Facebook can’t do yet is sell. I think you nailed that prediction.