Seven Top Online Marketing Trends for 2009

Barack Obama changed the political rule book: his 2008 presidential campaign leveraged the Internet's strength to engage disenchanted voters and register new voters. Future political campaigns won't be able to utilize these strategies with the same impact since they won't be as novel and the identified constituencies will now be an established part of the electoral process.

Going forward, online marketers will face challenges similar to those of their political counterparts. The online market's accelerated maturation due to recent economic turmoil means that growth will no longer come as easily. Growth now will have to come at the expense of other channels or competitors, rather than from new users.

Three Online Marketing Goals for 2009 and Related Metrics

Because both marketers and consumers will have limited budgets, we'll see longer sales cycles, lengthier prepurchase dialogues with consumers, and less brand advertising. As a result, companies will focus on the following three goals and the related analytic indicators to track them:

Increased ROI (define) from better resource utilization. Firms will also explore the potential for new revenue streams. In addition to tracking sales and expenses, companies will spend more time assessing tradeoffs.

Improved targeting based on a better understanding of the behaviors that drive profitable revenues. This translates into better data mining across functions to find areas of opportunity as well as the use of third-party behavioral targeting functionality.

Enhanced customer focus to determine what's being said about your organization and to respond quickly to resolve customer issues. This includes assessing your contact strategy, monitoring ratings and reviews, and participating in relevant online communities.

Get the full story at: ClickZ