Best Marketing Trends for 2012

The customer continues to be the king. 
Engaging customers with meaningful dialogue and relevant, timely information is very important for any business as the customer is the King.
The Data Grows. 
The amount of digital data is doubling every two years.  It is important to look at these customer interactions over time.   It is not just big technology companies that can harness the data and use it for marketing, new technologies and cloud computing have opened up all sorts of possibilities for even smaller marketers as well.
SoLoMo 
Google’s Matt Cutts coined this term.  The New York Times reported that advertisers lured customers away and stole competitor sales while they were waiting on line to make a purchase – an awesome combination of social, local and mobile all being used together.
Cloud computing and the  marketers. 
Cloud computing helps marketers by giving more accessibility to new technologies, reducing costs of marketing infrastructure (like servers and storage), easier scalability and low barriers to entry, which enables a more uniform playing field.
Email has not died. 
Spam filters and the threat of an opt-out registry haven’t dampened the growth of email.  In a recent interactive marketing forecast, Forrester predicted that email spending will continue to grow by 10% during the next several years, but marketers will focus the campaigns more using analytics.
Apps everywhere. 
The proliferation of smart phones and tablets has introduced apps on a very large scale.  It is beyond applications like Facebook, Twitter and Angry Birds; people are using them for business applications.  The app Evernote to store clipped data and emails.
Attribution
Touchpoint Attribution continues to be the buzzword for multichannel marketers. Attributing success to the right channel or channels is key to effective use of marketing revenue.  In a recent study by Unica, marketers said their top two priorities are “turning data into actions” and “attributing success to marketing.”
Content marketing. 
Relevant content has always been important to drive web traffic, but blogs, case studies and white papers are now being considered an important part of the marketing mix.  Marketers will need to provide visitors to Facebook or Twitter with meaningful content to get fans to return.
Right Multichannel marketing. 
Conversations and customer interactions that are taking place in social media are being harvested by social listening platforms.  These dialogues are being turned into campaigns that drive the right offer to the right buyer at the right time.

An integrated marketing approach

Social Media sites have continued to dominate the internet. Google introduced a new search algorithm in August 2010 called “Caffeine” to account for Social Media Buzz.

Social Media consists of many popular sites, such as Facebook, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, YouTube and others.  Effectively promoting business using Social Media is very time consuming.  It requires creating entertaining, enlightening or interesting content, promoting it on multiple networks and then getting others to take notice and promote it also.

SEO for Web2.0
To get ranked highly in Google, we need SEO, good content and backlinks.  Everyone knows this.   But now there is one additional ingredient required as a result of the Caffeine update:  you also need traffic. If other people like content on social media sites and vote for it, Digg it, Like it, etc., we will begin to get traffic to our site.
But this gets back to the problem of the time required to promote our content on social networks.  A more advanced and integrated approach is needed for effective online marketing.  Content syndication is the most effective way to harness the power of the social media, social voting and social news sites.  And it’s not just for big companies.  Anyone can plug-in to an effective content syndication network and begin to see just how powerful social sites have become.
To ignore the power of social networks is simply ignoring the evolution of the web.  We can take advantage of this relatively new phenomenon to increase traffic to your site and grow aour online presence.

Promotions through online marketing

The technological advances within the past few years have been marvelous. Everything from social networking sites, 3G and mobile internet access to the tablet innovation all point to the same direction and that is online marketing.

SEO has become a prerequisite. The key benefits of applying internet marketing to a business are tremendous.

• To bring in new clients
• Increase customer loyalty
• Improve reputation online
• Advertise brand name
• Lessen advertising expenses to just a fraction of what traditional advertising costs.

Here are some of the best SEO company methods which are verified to produce results:

• Keyword research - It's about focusing on targeted traffic. Keyword research includes hunting for the most sought after words and phrases in the search engines in regards to a specific niche. 
• Content material - This really is one more important element in creating an SEO-friendly website. Good quality is the primary concern here. Making as much quality content that provides back value to customers will bring you success. Develop content that people will enjoy and provides them satisfaction. 
• Press Releases - People usually commit a few minutes daily to read the news headlines. Press releases are stories about what is going on in the market and what's trending. Posting a helpful press release may end up in websites such as Yahoo News, PRWeb as well as major news networks like MSNBC news. Visualize how much site traffic that may lead to your site.
• Web2.0 sites - This resource is generally known for having user generated content. A few of the top web2.0 resources are hubpages.com, blogger.com and tumblr.com. A great service provider generates content that can catch the attention of readers and therefore are rerouted to your sales page.
• Bookmarking - Bookmarking is showing your favorite websites with an online network. Individuals with the same interests normally find out about each others bookmarked sites. So if you place the appropriate tags to your bookmark then this brings in another method to obtain site visitors. 
• RSS - Rss syndication is spreading your news feed to curious audiences. If ever readers decide to register for your feed then they will have fresh new content from you instantly each time you post something inside your website.
• Web Directories - This is the web based classifieds for business and services. Placing your website in web directories can lead to clients that are trying to find potential service providers in your sector.
• Social Networks - Social networks have the greatest potential aside from search engines. Websites like Facebook or Myspace.com have been completely embraced by almost everyone. Your business' presence in this type of media is important.
• Documents - pdf files, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations are also methods that should be utilized. PDF files and word documents can be converted into online magazines or e-zines that viewers can enjoy. PowerPoint presentations can also be uploaded to sites and become online coaching resources.
• Podcasts and Videos - Online videos are incredibly strong types of media especially if they become viral. If your video uploads go viral millions of viewers can view your advertisement. Youtube is the most preferred online video streaming site presently.

In this new age, large corporates and SMEs are looking at advertising avenues which are cheap, yet effective. There is no match to the capability of web2.0 in this field. More and more businesses are adopting the web2.0 methodologies which is yielding them good results. The viral marketing is really giving the businesses an enormous boost and they are already harvesting the benefits. By the way have you started web2 ....?