Marketing Trends Predicted for 2012
Social and online marketing had quite a year as Facebook and Twitter gained users, Google launched Google +, and location based applications were created. According to Optify, a leading provider of marketing software and services for the real-time Web, online marketing will create opportunities for more customer involvement and engagement in 2012. Here are a few trends on the list that stood out:
- Marketing automation 2.0 will arrive in 2012. Marketing automation will expand from primarily email focused to a way to consolidate and accelerate the entire marketing process. As a result, the increase in social customer relationship management that began in 2011 will continue through 2012.
- It is likely that the new year will also bring the expansion of utilizing “likes” to better predict customer’s preferences. “Likes” will advance to influence more than just online text content, it will begin to influence digital video content, such as “social TV”, and other social multimedia outlets.
- Despite privacy concerns, location-based marketing will continue to grow especially with mobile devices.
- It is predicted that Facebook will implement social commerce, thus changing how shopping is performed online. This new shopping platform will bring a whole new social aspect to shopping as customer interaction is inevitable and invited.
- The internet is not only changing how businesses interact with their customers, but also how businesses interact with employees. The globalization of the workforce will continue in 2012, and virtual teams, which are not rare even today, will begin to become more common.
As you can see, these trends in marketing for 2012 all have common themes. Online marketing strategies and mobile marketing will continue to be perfected and more targeted. Customer interaction will also continue to be a crucial part of developing marketing strategies and initiatives in the coming year.
