The internet will change the marketing playground in 2012. Digital marketing will offer opportunities to build brand value at lower cost. The challenge for marketers today is to exploit these opportunities, but what do we take for granted now?  Nobody has to search the meaning of ‘hashtag’ – it’s normal.

We’ve been introduced to several trends in digital marketing, let’s see what we know already and is going to be de rigeur in 2012.

Social media is growing up

Facebook, Twitter and more social networks are integrated. The social media marketing process is developed as a continuous cycle of research, planning, execution and measurement. This process will be taken as granted for many marketers, marketing functions and programs are adapted to the new reality.

Hashtags

Hashtags are used to make a word important on Twitter because they draw extra attention to a sentence. But now it is normal to hashtag a state of mind, a thought that you want to share. Young people are hashtagging on Facebook and in their emails now. People think this is annoying, because hashtags are to be used on Twitter only, but this switch is going to be taken for granted in 2012.

Personalization

Many websites are being personalized to engage more with their customers. Visitors will find a personalized environment, including pages with information from previous visits. Products and services are “preconfigured” based on the preferences of the visitor. Customers will get used to it and consider it standard in the future.

Mobile marketing

Mobile marketing exploded this year. In our previous blog we talked about QR codes and many more developments. QR codes are a great way for marketers to promote their new product, but customers will only get their smartphone out of their pocket to scan a code related to a topic of interest, this will not change in 2012 and will be taken for granted.

Marketing analytics

More advanced analytics were needed from all available data and come to get the correct information. The explosion of conversations led to a huge never-ending stream of incoming data. Smart analytics is necessary to eliminate useless data and to achieve meaningful accurate prediction of consumer behavior. Marketers already applied analytics and it will be a much used measure tool in 2012.

Has your marketing team moved with the times? If you need a campaign with all the up-to-date bells and whistles, you’ve got no alternative. Brief the Exchange.

What are the latest developments and trends in the field of Location Based Services (LBS)? As a company, where do you have to look for if you want to start with Location Based Marketing (LBM)? What business models are profitable and where are the opportunities?

First a few developments in the area of Location Based Services:

At this moment, 35% of all telephones are smartphones.

47% of all telephones in the world will be a smartphone in 2015.

63 million users used LBS in 2009, this will grow till 468 million users in 2012.

95% of the smartphone users is looking for location information.

Android grows as the most popular OS platform and it is expected that 48% of smartphones will run on Andriod by 2015.

So what are the business models?

Revenues are primarily derived from applications sold in the app store and services offered by mobile services providers. It is expected that revenues will remain stable from these applications and services. However, over the next four years, a strong increase is expected from advertising revenue in the LBS industry. These are mainly driven by user interest in coupons, games and contextual offers. Advertisers must ensure that these offers are offered in the right place, in the right context, at the right time, to the right person if the business model wants to succeed. Make sure that your advertising or promotional offers are relevant to consumers, based on location and content. Location targeting is the holy grail of mobile advertising!

Debenhams, the largest store in the UK, started developing their mobile strategy in July 2010. Through experimenting with various forms of mobile marketing (including iPhone app, OR codes, SMS, Foursquare specials & Facebook deals), they have a learned a lot about LBM.

LBM secures more traffic in your store, it has low costs, it can be used for campaigns: a few LBM campaigns (Foursquare, Vouchercloud) reaches a small public and SMS and mobile coupons reach a bigger public.

What are the trends for the coming years?

The use of sensors: more and more smartphones are equipped with an array of sensors. Temperature, humidity, sound level or energy consumption can be measured by sensors in smartphones in the future and this information can be linked to location data.

Gamification: playing games on smartphones and tablets that are linked to location information are becoming increasingly popular. The advertising revenue from this sector are rising steadily.

Social validation: share with your friends (and brag out) where you’ve been, what you have done, or how much knowledge you have. Why do we share things on Facebook? To get “likes” and “comments” from others. Gowalla believes that applications based on social validation are the future.

Location search marketing: to be found in search results based on location is one of the most important and  promising developments in LBA. Examples of these location services are Foursquare and Facebook places.

Indoor navigation: combining several location technologies (GPS, WiFi, Cell ID, sensors) should in the future enable to find the location of the user precisely. This offers opportunities for indoor navigation and advertising.

Do you think this is interesting for your company and want to start with Location Based Marketing? Brief the Exchange at blur-marketing.com and be helped with strategies by the marketers of our community!

A new trend in the media world! Watching TV is connected to social media. More and more people are publishing their messages on a social media platform while watching a TV program, just to bring something forward about what they have seen. TV changes, but how?

Some broadcasters are aware of this “publishing opinions” trend and are reforming their business quickly. Nowadays, a TV company has to offer the public a platform where they can follow the program live online and where they can buzz about what they’re seeing. People are logged in on the platform via their Facebook account and can place reactions through a live chat possibility. And that will be published on the company’s account.

This kind of real time conversations between friends or fans of the TV program will engage the viewer, what is compared to word of mouth. The audience will also receive more power and a voice, because in the past it was not possible to show your opinion about the program directly! If companies would discover a few influencers in the audience, they should reward them. Influencers are people who are watching a program regularly, are sharing their opinions often and call for reactions of other persons. Their opinion is taken seriously, because they influence the accountability of others.

Programmers can use the data they’ll get via social media to make efficient choices regarding program development. The expressions of sentiment affects what happens in the future on the television broadcast, if the program maker listens to the sound of the audience…

TV broadcasters have to stream pilots for their new shows and ask the viewers to vote and to express their opinion, this is recorded real time. Pilots are showed online and are viewable for everyone, and based on feedback the broadcaster will compose a new program!

In general, the viewers feel engaged while watching the program. Sometimes it continues to the next day and this involvement will express herself via social media. Programmers can increase the engagement by searching for ways to generate the expressions for 24/7. This can happen in two ways:

1. The content of the program has to be really interesting and should evoke reactions, discussions and thoughts.

2. Programmers have to find a way to get people together.

Point 2 is easily achieved by creating Facebook fan pages, where people can leave their statements, background information, additional images and latest news. The audience must also be able to find this information back again. Programmers can also spread information via Twitter, but the connection is less than spreading info around via Facebook. People are less willing to pay attention to those messages on Twitter. This social network is known for business posts, while Facebook is more a private network and this is where entertainment belongs.

Programmers have to find on Twitter for expressions via keywords or hashtags if they want to know the viewers opinion about their programs.

So the big invention “social media” will be used in a new way! So if you also want to use social platforms in an innovative way, why not submit a brief on the Exchange?

Creative professionals and agencies who are members of the Exchange are more willing to help you.

You can submit your brief here!