
This is a guest post by Kathleen Hubert. Her bio is at the end of the article
Internet marketing techniques and strategies evolve constantly. For this reason, marketing professionals must continually analyze and adjust marketing plans to ensure the best results. Upgrading a website or embracing a new social media tool are two ways to increase lead generation and bolster 2012 sales revenues. While certain constants such as posting relevant content regularly are always critical to online marketing success, new social media tools and SEO techniques continue to replace and improve on older versions that were once thought to be cutting edge.
Video marketing
Video marketing is expected to increase in 2012 as more consumers upgrade to smartphones. Evidently, there is some belief in the old adage that a picture is worth a 1000 words. According to comScore, an Internet tracking firm that identifies trends, 40 billion videos were viewed by consumers in November 2011 alone. In the article, “The Top Ten Internet Marketing Trends of 2012″, Tech Journal reported that customers who view videos are 437% more likely to buy that brand. As a marketing tool, video is a proven way to engage new customers and forge new relationships.
Mobile and text marketing
Text marketing is another relatively new form of reaching out to prospective customers. As technology evolves and more consumers use text for communication, savvy marketing professionals use this tool as a way to conduct market research and advertise new offers. For example, a car dealership might send a text message out about new low interest car loans to a customer who did not buy because they did not have enough cash and did not want to pay high interest rates.
According to the firm RichRelevance, a shopping personalization firm, the mobile marketplace boasts 90 million smartphone users in the U.S. alone. When you add in the 24 million tablet users, it is obvious that this is a huge marketplace worthy of attention. Marketing professionals who want to reach this market must optimize their corporate sites to be smartphone-friendly.
Emails
Email campaigns that include event-driven or triggered emails are a perfect way to reach out to prospective customers on a regular basis. Two advantages that emails have over text messages is that they can be longer and will reach people who do not use the texting as a way to communicate. Some phones make it hard to text and some people are simply not interested in the text message feature on phones.
Triggered emails were used frequently in 2011 and are expected to be a significant part of 2012 email usage. This type of email is sent in response to a customer interaction. For example, the car loan example above is a triggered email. Another example of a triggered email would be an email sent to a customer who abandoned a hopping cart online, deciding not to purchase. A company can send them an email and try to recapture that sale by providing a discount or some other incentive to buy.
Local search marketing
Incorporating local search and Google Local into a company’s marketing plan as a top priority is crucial for success. According to Tech Journal, purchases are the result of 61% of all local searches. Numbers like that motivate marketing directors to focus on local search marketing even more in 2012.
Kathleen Hubert is a blogger who writes on a variety of different sites. Check out more of her work at car loans.