Dan Wallace is the founder of Ideafood, a consultancy that focuses on increasing sales and profitability. I was interested in two things he put yesterday. Firstly, he did a quick online poll of his clients and colleagues about how they plan to spend marketing budgets in the coming year. The results are interesting – see them here.
Then, he pulled together a variety of industry experts and came up with eleven marketing trends for 2011. None of them are mind-blowing (he’s not looking five or ten years ahead, after all), but taken together they provide a strong sense of the direction business will be taking this year. All he has posted on his LinkedIn group is the headings, but they’re probably enough to get you thinking about where your priorities lie in the year ahead:
1. Useful web content will be a top priority.
2. Two minute YouTube videos will spread.
3. Customer experience will receive ongoing care.
4. Story will become a more common brand differentiator.
5. Small experiments will be seen as smart research.
6. Online specials and deals will keep growing.
7. Pay-per-click ads will link to social media more often.
8. Traditional advertising will work to add intrinsic value.
9. Face-to-face events will grow in importance.
10. Business leaders will co-create with customers.
11. And, finally, mobile marketing is the real deal.
Follow Dan on Twitter for more: http://twitter.com/Ideafood